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^o. 696 do. Graves 40 Cents 

Entered at the Poet-Office at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter. Issued Monthly. Subscription Price per Year, 12 Nos., $5.00. 
Extra 

A FIELD OF TARES 




BY 

CLO. GRAVES 



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NEW YOEK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

April, 1891 



HARPER’S FRANKLIN SQUARE LIBRARY.- LATEST ISSUE 


CENTS. 


C96. A Field of Tares. A Novel. By Clo. Graves 40 

C95. The Golden Goat. A Novel. By Paul Areue. 

Translated by Mary J. Saflford. Illustrated ... 60 
094. Annie Kilburii. A Novel. By W. D. Howells. . 75 
093. A Hazard of New Fortunes. A Novel. By W. 

D. Howells. Illustrated 100 

092. The Lost Heiress. A Novel. By E. Glanville.. 40 

091. The Great Taboo. A Novel. By Grant Allen. . 40 

090. A Secret Mission. A Novel 40 

089. Her Love and his Life. A Novel. By F. W. 

Robinson 30 

OSS. Stand Fast, Craig-Iloyston ! A Novel. By Will- 
iam Black. Illustrated 60 

687. Marcia. A Novel. By W. E. Norris 40 


680. The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoeni- 
cian. A Novel. By Edwin Lester Arnold. Ill’d 50 
68!5. The Snake’s Pass. A Novel. By Bram Stoker. 40 
684. The World’s Desire. A Novel. By H. Rider 


Haggard and Andrew Lang 35 

653. Kirsteen. A Novel. By Mrs. Oliphant 40 

6S2. My Shipmate Louise : The Romance of a Wreck. 

By W. Clark Russell 60 

681. Children of Gibeon. ANovel. By Walter Besant 50 
680. The Courting of Dinah Shadd, and other Stories. 

By Rudyard Kipling 30 

679. The Entailed Hat. A Novel. By George Alfred 

Townsend (“ Gath”) 60 

678. At an Old Chateau. A Novel. By Katharine S. 

Macquoid 35 

677. Sowing the Wind. A Novel. By Mrs. E. Lynn 

Linton 25 

676. Toxar. ANovel. By the Author of “Thoth,” etc 30 
675. All Sorts and Conditions of Men. A Novel. 

By Walter Besant. Illustrated 60 

674. Armorel of Lyonesse. A Novel. By Walter 

Besant. Illustrated 60 

673. The Burnt Million. A Novel. By James Payn 25 
672. The Shadow of a Dream. A Story. By W. D. 

Howells 50 

671. Beatrice. ANovel. By H. Rider Haggard. Ill’d 30 
670. In Her Earliest Youth. ANovel. ByTasma.. 45 
669. The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers. 

A Novel and its Sequel 40 

668. Lady Baby. A Novel. By Dorothea Gerard... 45 

667. The Splendid Spur. A Novel. By Q 35 

606. Lorna Doone. ANovel. By R. D. Blackmore. 

Illustrated 40 

665. The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard. ANovel. By 

An at ole France. Translated by Lafcadio Hearn 50 
664. Prince Fortunatus. ANovel. By William Black. 

Illustrated 60 

603. Kit and Kitty. A Novel. By R. D. Blackmore. 35 
662. An Ocean Tragedy. A Novel. By W. Clark 

Russell 60 

601. A Hazard of New Fortunes. A Novel. By 

William Dean Howells. Illustrated 75 

660. The Bell of St. Paul’s. ANovel. By W. Be.sant 35 
659. Marooned. ANovel. By W. Clark Russell. . . 25 
658. Diana Wentworth. ANovel. By Caroline Foth- 

ergill 45 

657. Lady Car. A Novel. By Mrs. Oliphant 30 

666. Ogeechee Cross-Firings. A Novel. By R. M. 

Johnston. Illustrated by A. B. Frost 35 

655. Margaret Maliphant. ANovel. ByMrs. Comyns 

Carr 45 

654. The County. A Story of Social Life 45 

65.3. Through Love to Life. ANovel. By GillanVase. 40 
652, Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill. A Novel. By 

Tasnia 40 

651. Birch Dene. A Novel, By William Westall. 45 
650 . The Day Will Come. ANovel. By Miss Braddon 45 
649. Cleopatra. A Novel. By H. Rider Haggard. 

Illustrated 25 

648. Micah Clarke. A Novel. By A. Conan Doyle. 45 


647. Zit and Xoe. A Novel. By the Author 

“ Lady Bluebeard.” 

646. The Nether World. A Novel. By Geo. Gissi. 

645. Fraternity. A Romance 

644. The Phantom Future. A Novel. By Henry I 

Merriman • * ' * V. 

643. The Country Cousin. A Novel. By Franc 

Mary Peard 

642. Lady Bluebeard. A Novel. By the Author < 

“Zit and Xoe.” 

641. A Dangerous Catspaw. A Novel. By D. Chri 

tie Murray and Henry Murray 

640. French Janet. A Novel. By Sarah Tyller.. . 
639. A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cyliij 

der. Illustrated 

638. Toilers of Babylon. A Novel. By B. L. Farjec 
637. The Weaker Vessel. A Novel. By D. Christ 

Murray. Illustrated 

636. When a Man’s Single. A Tale of Literary Lif 

By J. M. Barrie 

635. The Peril of Richard Pardon. A Novel. I 

B, L. Farjeou. Illustrated 

634. For Faith and Freedom. A Novel. By Walb 

Besant. Illustrated 

633. The Countess Eve. ANovel. By J.H.Shorthoui 
632. AChristmas Rose. ANovel. By R.E.Francillo; 

631. Yule-Tide Stories and Pictures. 4to 

6.30. The Inner House. A Novel. By Walter Besat 
629. In Far Lochaber. A Novel. By WTlliara Bla( 
628. The Mediation of Ralph Hardelot. A Nov< 

By William Minto 

627. The Rebel Rose. A Novel 

626. The Eavesdropper. A Novel. By James Paj 
625. Through the Long Nights. A Novel. By Mr 

E. Lynn Linton 

624. The Fatal Three. A Novel. By M. E. Braddt 
623. The Mystery of Mirbridge. A Novel. By Jam 

Payn. Illustrated 

622. The Strange Adventures of a House-Boat. 

Novel. By W’illiam Black. Illustrated 

621. Wessex Tales. By Thomas Hardy 

620. Joyce. ANovel. By Mrs. Oliphant ; 

619. The Life of WMlliam L, Emperor of Germai' 

and King of Prussia. 4to. Illustrated 

618. Herr Paulus. A Novel. By Walter Besant. . 
617. Only a Coral Girl. A Novel. By Gertrude Fori 
616. For the Right. A Novel. By Karl Emil Fra 
zos. Translated by Julie Sutter. With a Pr 

face by George Macdonald, LL.D 

615. Thrift. By Samuel Smiles 

614. Miser Farebrother. A Novel. By B. L. Farje 

Illustrated 

613. Katharine Regina. A Novel. By Walter B • 

612. Character. By Samuel Smiles ; 

611. In Exchange for a Soul. A Novel. By 

Linskill 

610. M6re Suzanne, and other Stories. By K. 

rine S. Macquoid 

609. Her Two Millions. A Novel. By Willia 

Westall. Illustrated ' 

608. Friend MacDonald and the Land of the Mo* 

seer. By Max O’Rell ' 

607. The Frozen Pirate. A Novel. By W. Cla 

Russell. Illustrated 

606. One that Wins. A Novel. By the Author 

“ Whom Nature Leadeth” 

605. A Fair Crusader. A Story of To-day. By Wi 

iam Westall 

604. An Ugly Duckling. A Novel. By Ilenry Err 
603. Paddy at Home (“CTicz Paddy"). By Baron E.l 
Mandat-Grancey. Translated by A. P. Mortt 
602. Madame’s Granddaughter. By Frances M. Pea 
601. Diane De Breteuille. A Love Story. By B 
bert E. H. Jerningham : 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

1*’“ HAttPER ^ Bbotkebs will send any of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the Unitt 

Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 


A FIELD OF TARES 

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NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 


1891 







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TO 

ANNIE IKISH 





PROEM. 


This is the story of a woman ivhose life from girlhood up has 
been tainted and overshadowed ; who has drunk to the dregs of 
every hitter cup that the world has to offer, before she is levelled 
to the dust by the weight of an unmerited disgrace; to expiate in 
bitterness the crime committed by another; and who sins of her 
oivn will, deliberately, to regain her lost place in Society. The 
woman takes her Fate into her own hands. She lives, and will 
live, the life of honor and respect that she deems should have been 
hers by right; and when at the very zenith of success, a terrible 
danger threatens her, a deeper gulf opens at her feet than any she 
has shuddered at before — when her daughter's happiness and the 
honor of her husband are at stake, as well as her own — the des- 
perate woman is ready to commit the desiderate crime that alone ' 
can save her from exposure. She grasps the living instrument 
of destruction that presents itself to her hand. With the terrible 
selfishness of a woman who loves, she is ready to profit by an- 
other's sin — ready even to accept the supreme sacrifice of another's 
life. . . . But at the moment when the last obstacle is swept from 
her path, and she stands a free woman again, and sole possessor 
of her guilty Secret, the Nemesis of Retribution descends upon 
and overwhelms her. She combats to the last with Death, as she 
has combated with Circumstance and with Destiny, and her last 
living moment is an assertion of her undying and undefeated 
Will. 


Clo. Graves. 


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CONTENTS 




JBoofl 1F. 

SOWING -TIME. 

. CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A HOUSE OF SHADOWS 1 

II. OUR ENGLISH FRIEND 4 

III. THE BLACK-LEATHER POCKET-BOOK 12 

IV. AWAKENING 18 


jBook irir. 

GROWING -TIME. 

I. THE KATANAGHS 24 

II. THE KAVANAGHS — CONTINUED 27 

III. HOW COLONEL KAVANAGH SOLVED THE PROBLEM 33 

IV. TWELVE YEARS AFTER 36 

V. MR. HOELL BRINNILOW . : 39 

VI. THE prodigal’s RETURN 44 

VII. THE STORY CONTINUED IN AN EXTRACT FROM GEORGE KAVANAGH’S 

PRIVATE JOURNAL 49 

Vlll. EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED 54 

IX. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED . . ‘ . 68 

X. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 63 

XI. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 69 

XII, THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 83 

XIII. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 90 

XIV. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 95 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


jBook mrif. 

REAPING-TIME. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. SHADOWS 108 

II. DOES SHE THINK SO? 112 

III. PLEASANT WEATHER 116 

IV. PLEASANT TELLS A STORY 124 

V, AT THE HALL 131 

VI. “when love IS young” 133 

VII. AT THE SHRIEKING PITS 140 

VIII. CLOSING IN 142 

IX. MORE SHADOWS 148 

X. THE STORY CONTINUED IN ANOTEHR EXTRACT FROM GEORGE KAVA- 

NAGH’s PRIVATE JOURNAL 162 

XI. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 164 

XII. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 169 

XIII. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 163 

XIV. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 166 

XV. BROUGHT TO BAY 176 

XVI. HOELL 182 

XVII. THE WAY TO SAVE HER 186 

XVIII. THE STORY CONTINUED IN ANOTHER EXTRACT FROM GEORGE KAVA- 

nagh’s journal 189 

XIX. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED ^ 192 

XX. ON THE BRINK 194 

XXI. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 199 

XXII. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 212 


asooll KID. 

SLEEPING-TIME. 

I. THE JOURNAL 217 

II. THE JOURNAL — CONTINUED 231 

III. PLEASANT REMEMBERS . 233 

IV. PLEASANT FINDS HER MASTER . . . . 237 

V. DREAMS 239 

VI. ON THE WAY 241 

VII. REPRIEVED 243 

VIII. THE SHADOW FALLS 244 

IX. THE JOURNAL — CONCLUDED 263 


A FIELD OF TARES. 


Book IF. 

SOWING-TIME, 


CHAPTER 1. 

A HOUSE OF SHADOWS. 

Night in the city of Brussels, in the year 1874. It was the 
hour when dreams become prophetic; when the lamp of the 
student burns low and dimly ; when the last breath of life ex- 
hales from the clammy lips of the dying; when the currents 
of air hang charmed and motionless between pole and pole; 
when the tides of ocean lie heaped up and swelling beneath 
the footstool of the regnant moon. 

Rain had fallen ; the pavements were newly washed with it 
and shining, the gutters yet gurgling with memories of past re- 
pletion ; it dripped from the young foliage of trees in parks and 
boulevards ; it weighed down the lush herbage in deserted gar- 
dens ; it spouted from mouths of Gothic monsters adorning ec- 
clesiastical eaves; from ledges and cornices it trickled, or distilled 
from iron convent gratings like slow despairing tears. Though 
the season was midspring, the atmosphere had an indescribable 
wintry freshness, the stars in the frosty violet dome overhead an 
icy glitter ; the piled-up roofs of many-storied buildings, the huge 
tenebrous outlines of palaces, churches, monuments, hotels, swam 
in a cold electric radiance, like icebergs resting upon the pulseless 
bosom of some undiscovered polar sea. But that the tramp of a 
patrolling policeman, or the stealthy, padding footstep of some 
1 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


belated wanderer, sometimes broke the silence of dimly-lighted 
squares or deserted boulevards, Brussels might have been a City 
of the Dead. 

A city of sleep certainly, but for signs of waking here and 
there apparent; but for lights moving along quay-edges and 
twinkling in the court -yard of the Custom-house; but for 
stealthy gleams penetrating through chinks in closed shutters 
of dubious cafes and early opening estaminets ; but for the 
blazing casements of the ball-room at the English Embassy, yet 
vibrating with tread of dancers’ feet, the melodious crash of mil- 
itary instruments that brought the last waltz to its triumphant 
close; but for the wakeful, yellow gas-glare streaming through 
the jealously drawn-down window-blinds of an apartment on the 
second story of a gaunt old house in the Place du Congres. 

The apartment of Madame de Quayros, in effect. One of the 
lions watching in the place below, sprawling supine in a pool 
of spilled moonlight at the base of Leopold’s Column, could 
have told one as much. 

Uncommonly well-attended had been the salon of Madame de 
Quayros on this particular night. Shadows of so many varieties 
of shape, and such dazzling efflorescences of gesture, had been 
thrown upon those closely- drawn buff blinds, in relief against 
the radiance emanating from behind them, that the soberest 
sense might well have grown dizzy in merely trying to distin- 
guish one from another. 

Shadows with double chins, and shadows with none. Shad- 
ows Roman - nosed and shadows snubbed. Lean shadows, stout 
shadows, long fantastic shadows, short grotesque ones. Shadows 
bifurcate — masculine almost without exception. Once or twice, 
indeed, a portly matron shadow, with a bosom and a bustle — the 
shadow of madame, beyond a doubt. Twice or once a slighter 
woman’s shadow, a shadow in flowing draperies, with a shadowy 
grace in its smooth movements and a shadowy pride in the car- 
riage of its head. Shambling waiter -shadows, bearing trays. 
Young and old shadows. Shadows of many nationalities, mus- 
tered upon a single spot of neutral ground, within the dominions 
of his Majesty King Thomas Tiddler, and presided over by 
Madame de Quayros in the congenial character of the Genius of 
Play. 

But no more than this the lion could have told one — except 


A HOUSE OF SHADOWS. 


3 


that, as the night gradually wore itself out, so the groups of 
shadows dwindled and grew less, broke up, and faded out by 
twos and threes. Single silhouettes succeeded, but these were 
shadows proper to the house, which, indeed, might have been 
called a House of Shadows — even in the daytime, O Lion of the 
Beiges ! 

It was very cold. A piercing wind blew from the north-east. 
Jagged ramparts of sable cloud were building on the opposite 
horizon, the chilly eyes of the stars were obscured by drifting 
veils of grayish vapor. It was very still. One might, standing 
in the Place du Congres, have heard a pin drop, a flower fall to 
the pavement, from one of the balconies above. 

As it was, the faint chime of a striking clock, tying a quad- 
ruple knot in a slender thread of sound, broke upon the silence 
quite aggressively. It was a musical clock, for a tinkling little 
noise that, heard at a less distance, might have resolved itself into 
some^familiar melody, followed on the stroke. It must have 
been, without doubt, the fastest clock in Brussels, for nearly a 
quarter of an hour had elapsed before, from turret, dome, and 
steeple, other voices, deep-throated and sonorous, proclaimed the 
hour of four — now near, now far, now distant, now remote, now 
coming closer, now startlingly nigh at hand — whirring, burring, 
trumpeting, clanging, chanting, moaning, humming. The atmos- 
phere vibrated, the massive piles of masonry, the stone pavement 
underfoot seemed throbbing with sound. It was a brief, mad 
carnival of striking hammers, of whirring wheels, of spinning 
cylinders, of chiming bells. An instant longer it endured — no 
more; and as the last of the solemn voices sank to silence, the 
eastern sky became suffused with a tremulous greenish radiance, 
the stars died out, one by one, upon the windy blue overhead. 
From eave and parapet, from turret and gable, from belfry and 
tower, from leafy trees and close-clipped garden hedges, from arbor 
lattices and espaliers a mighty chirping rose. 

“ Daybreak !” piped the sparrows of Brussels, in chorus. 


4 


DKAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER 11. 

OUR ENGLISH FRIEND. 

Daybreak struggling through the closely drawn-down blinds, 
wrinkled and buff in color, of a certain apartment on the sec- 
ond story of that gaunt house in the Place du Congres, mak- 
ing the sickly - yellow gaslight more yellow and sickly by con- 
trast ; creeping inch by inch across the dusty, thick-piled carpet, 
littered with scraps of paper and smouldering ends of cigarettes ; 
revealing in all its ugliness the sordid disorder of a room evident- 
ly not long since deserted of its habitues. Scattered cards were 
under and close by the long table, covered with green plush, marked 
with lines of gold for baccarat playing. A shaded lamp stood 
there, somewhat askew, as though hastily set down out of a care- 
less hand, and a palm-leaf shaped scoop for collecting counters, 
and an ivory croupier’s rake lay sociably upon it side by side, 
like partners recently retired from active business. It was a lofty 
room, the salon, with a narrow fireplace, frpm which, in deference 
to the spring warmth of the weather, the stove had recently been 
banished. A long, slim looking-glass hung above the high, nar- 
row mantel-shelf, on which stood a gilt clock, with a figure of a 
plump young damsel, also gilt, sitting on a wheel. There were 
pictures on the walls, oleaginously shining specimens of chromo- 
lithography, the “ Chasse aux Lievres ” opposing the “ Chasse 
au Loup,” and a “ Printemps de la Vie,” supported by a cloudy 
representation in smoke and scarlet of the “ Battle of Waterloo.” 
Between the two long buff-blinded windows that looked upon 
the Place du Congres stood a rickety marble-topped console-ta- 
ble, upon which a withered begonia, in a terra-cotta fiower-pot, 
presided over an army of empty bottles, sticky - footed liqueur 
glasses and tumblers, crumby plates, dirty knives and forks — the 
disjecta membra of a hasty stand-up supper. Above hung a con- 
vex mirror in a 'chipped ormolu frame, so directly opposite the 
folding-doors opening from the squeezy little staircase vestibule 
as to present to the entering guest of madame his own reflection. 


OUR ENGLISH FRIEND. 


5 


curiously foreshortened, and, as it were, in the act of taking a 
header into dubious society. To the right-hand of the guest so 
situated another door presented itself, leading, presumably, to 
sleeping apartments beyond, while upon his left heavy curtains 
of dusty red plush, falling from the careless guardianship of a 
family of dissipated plaster Loves, guarded the sanctity of ma- 
dame’s boudoir. 

^he curtains fell together in heavy folds, bulging strangely 
about the middle. There might have been a draught blowing 
behind them from an open window in the boudoir, for they were 
stirred every now and then with a sound that was like a heavy 
breath ; at least, so it seemed to one of two secretive-looking, 
greasily-clad, silent-footed, close-cropped Belgian waiters, who, 
under the superintendence of madame — arrayed in evening 
splendors of yellow satin and black lace, rather rusty, with gar- 
nets heaving on her bosom and twinkling on her plump white 
hands — were busily removing the debris of the supper. 

He was so moved by curiosity regarding that draught from 
the boudoir, was this particular Belgian waiter, as to take ad- 
vantage of an apparent lapse of watchfulness on the part of 
madame — who stood in an attitude of meditation by the fire- 
place, her large arms crossed upon her massive bosom, her large 
eyes drooping, and a smile upon her lips — to approach the cur- 
tains. But a slight cough from madame caused him to start 
guiltily and withdraw the hand that had been gingerly extended 
towards one of those red plush folds ; and as the eye of madame 
met and dwelt unbenevolently upon his own, he shuffled out after 
his companion with his burden of glasses, a very crestfallen 
Belgian waiter indeed. 

A charming woman, Madame de Quayros! A goddess at 
whose somewhat battered shrine worshippers of all nationalities 
had paid homage. Adorable still, though proprietress of graces 
that had reduplicated, of charms that had expanded with the 
march of that very ungallant old person, Time. Of polyglot gifts, 
of cosmopolitan attractions, of varied experiences — a citizeness 
of the world, a wandering Arab, as she would sometimes call 
herself in moments of pathos — continually traversing the parched- 
deserts of life in search of some green oasis — the greener the 
better — in which to pitch tl^at ever-shifting tent of hers. A 
hardy old navigator, who had dropped anchor in many strange 


6 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


harbors, and 'sounded many strange depths, and sailed many 
strange seas — uncommonly close to the wind, too, in all of them ! 
Under the shadow of a certain sable-hued piece of bunting, too 
well known to need a name, but rendered forever memorable in 
song and story by the glorious careers of Monsieur Lolonnois, of 
Mynheer Esquemeling, of Mister William Avery, and of Captain 
Kidd. 

Left alone, madame, moving to. the console-table, filled a litfle 
glass with cognac from a crystal liqueur-barrel that stood there, 
and drained it. With a preoccupied air she drew a little ciga- 
rette from a little case, mechanically sought for a match, and, not 
finding one, turned to the shaded lamp that cast a mellow cir- 
cle of light on the verdant plush of the baccarat-table. As she 
bent above it, those closed curtains of the boudoir were ag^in 
agitated by a breath — like a heavy sigh. Madame start'd^ 
almost imperceptibly, and a curious expression dawned over heiNv 
features. She exhaled a puff of cigarette smoke, and began to 
pace noiselessly up and down, stealthily to and fro in front of 
the veiled alcove, getting nearer to the curtains with each turn. 
She came to a stand-still in front of them at last, and stretched 
out her hand deliberately to part them. But even as the crooked 
tips of her plump white fingers brushed the crimson folds, they 
recoiled — the out-stretched arm dropped to her side. A woman 
had entered suddenly by the folding -doors leading from the 
staircase vestibule, and, coming close behind madame, touched 
her lightly on the shoulder. 

A handsome woman, and young, with defiant eyes, and still 
more defiant lips. A woman at terrible odds with the world — 
brazened, reckless, hardened, but with something of the wom- 
anly nature left in her still. A woman in sweeping silks, with 
half-bare arms and bosom, with half-dead fiowers at her breast, 
with diamonds, false as the smile of madame herself, gleaming 
on her throat and in her hair ; with a large, loose mantle of some 
dark material, heavily bordered with fur, falling superbly from 
her. A woman unmistakably of English race, and yet with an 
undulating grace in her slow movements, a subtle witchery in 
her glance, that denoted foreign rearing — possibly an admixture 
of the Saxon tide flowing in her veins with foreign blood. Look- 
ing on her face — a face that separated itself strangely from 
crowds of other faces as strange to you seen bending from a 


OUR ENGLISH FRIEND. 


1 


theatre-box, or glancing from a carriage, or at the other side of 
a tahle-d'hote, moving along a thronged gallery or a great prom- 
enade — you might have called it a strange face, or a proud face, 
a weary face, a fierce face, a melancholy face, a brooding face, 
a watchful face ; a face all the more remarkable for the mass of 
hair that crowned it like a shining helmet, hair faintly golden 
in the light, pale brown in the shadow, already blended, despite 
the woman’s youth, with heavy streaks of gray. But always a 
face to be remembered. “ Who is she ?” you would have inter- 
rogated as she passed you by, a stranger and unheeding. “ What 
is she ?” you would have asked, if you and she had met, and she 
had spoken a few words to you. “ Why is she — ?” you would 
have exclaimed, finding only increased bewilderment in knowl- 
edge of her. Reply to two out of the three questions only be- 
ing possible in the case of Mrs. Dudleigh — charming name, Dud- 
leigh ! — the friend and partner of Madame de Quayros. 

Mrs. Dudleigh, with great composure, stood and looked at 
madame, and madame, whose equanimity had been seriously dis- 
turbed by the suddenness of her entrance, but who had had time 
to recover, sustained and returned the scrutiny with admirable 
coolness. 

“ You are late, my dearest,” madame remarked in English. 
Mistress of many languages was Madame de Quayros, and her 
English was admirable — like herself. 

“ Your clock there,” returned Mrs. Dudleigh, comparing the 
dial of a tiny watch with that of the gilt timepiece on the man- 
tel-shelf, “ is a quarter of an hour too fast.” 

“To business, then,” rejoined madame, with a kind of sinister 
gayety in her nod, and her fanged and gleaming smile. “ To 
business, business, business.” 

“ Our business can wait,” the other woman said, “ till I have 
had a little conversation with you, Dorothea.” 

“ Conversation !” repeated madame. “ By my faith ! a pretty 
hour for conversation this.” 

“ I have something to say to you,” Mrs. Dudleigh answered, 
“ that must be said to-night.” 

* “ You always were and always will be obstinate,” declared 
madame. “ My efforts to reform your character in that respect 
have been efforts thrown away. In others you do my teaching 
credit, it must be confessed.” 


8 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ I congratulate you, and your friends and patrons have more 
reason to congratulate you on the result of your labors,” re- 
turned the other, with a sneer. 

“ ‘Our’ friends and patrons. Why not ‘our,’ my sweetest?” 
demanded madame, with a tigerish smile. “ Have you not been 
partner with me these two years ? Have you not always share ?” 

“In your projects — your enterprises — yes. In your risk and 
danger, yes again. In the certainty of ultimate detection and 
exposure, yes, most certainly. But in nothing else have I had 
my share, and you know it. The proceeds of our last Parisian 
campaign, for instance ?” 

Madame spat upon the carpet, and relieved her features of an 
energetic grimace. 

“ Were miserably small.” 

“ It would appear that those who declare swindling to be one 
of the most thriving branches of industry are mistaken,” com- 
mented Mrs. Dudleigh. “ The contents of the little valise, of 
which, at the express request of our young friend, the banker of 
Frankfort, we consented to take charge — ?” 

“ Bonds which were not negotiable — circular notes upon banks 
and bureaus of exchange, which it would be dangerous for our 
agents to approach. ... A few rouleaux and a bundle of love 
letters from the amiable wife of the partner of Monsieur the 
Banker. Nothing more.” 

“ The fiend of the mediaeval legends used to pay down hard 
cash — solid ingots — to the proprietors of the souls he pur- 
chased,” went on Mrs. Dudleigh, in the same even voice, leaning 
one round white elbow on the mantel-shelf, and meeting ma- 
dame’s furious stare with calm, unhostile eyes. “ It is for you, 
my Dorothea, to drive a harder market even than the devil.” 

“ You jest always,” madame snarled. “ You jest at every- 
thing : at the police, at the prison, at the galleys, at the guillo- 
tine.” 

“ Not at the guillotine. I hold that, of all French institutions, 
in the greatest respect — it made me a widow.” 

“ It make you someting else one of these days, perhaps,” 
hinted madame. 

“ Haven’t I said scores of times, that, unlike you, I draw the 
line at capital offences ?” 

“ I should advise you to alter this tone without delay.” Thus 


OUR ENGLISH FRIEND. 


9 


madame, in a yellow fury, tapping her foot upon the carpet. “ It 
is a mistaken one. These moods, too, are not to be cherished ; 
they are dangerous, like weapons that cut both ways.” 

“ You took a dangerous weapon in your grasp when first you 
made up your mind to handle me.” 

“ A weapon of English make, of keen temper, and excellent 
edge. Better for it to have served my purpose than to have 
been left rusting in a prison of France !” 

“ I wish, with all my soul, it was rusting in a French prison 
now,” Mrs. Dudleigh broke out, passionately. 

“ Or in a Belgian one,” amended madame, with a movement 
of impatience. “Permit me to inform you that, as matters 
stand at present, there is a handsome chance of your wish beinar 
fulfilled.” 

She drew a soiled and crumpled scrap of paper from the re- 
cesses of her corsage and tossed it to her companion. 

“You recognize the style? You have seen the handwriting 
before? You acknowledge the source of information as unim- 
peachable ?” 

“Being the Head Office of Police itself. Well, forewarned is 
forearmed. You have made all arrangements, I suppose? You 
have spoken to the people of the house ?” 

“Exactly. Descourtes is quite prepared for anything that 
may arise. It is very simple. When Monsieur the Chief of 
Police arrives to-morrow night — ” 

“ To-night, you mean !” 

“ There will be no one here to receive him. Observe the ad- 
mirable result of our not occupying the same apartments. You 
will be able to join me at Paris in a few hours without having 
aroused the suspicions of a single creature here.” 

“ A capital plan, but travelling costs money, and I have none.” 

“ None?” 

“ Not a single napoleon.” 

“ It is awkward, that.” 

“ I share your sentiments. Come ! determine what is to be 
done. Do I join you, Florette, the parrot, Fifi, and the other 
nfembers of our interesting firm, at Paris, or do I remain behind 
in Brussels to make myself agreeable to Monsieur the Chief of 
Police ? He is a charming person, I am told. I am quite anx- 
ious to make his acquaintance.” 


10 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“Fow shall r 

A third voice, that broke in upon the colloquy of madarae and 
her charming partner with startling effect. A hoarse voice, its 
accents broken and halting, coming from behind the drawn cur- 
tains of madame’s boudoir. 

“ You shall show me that card, you d d swindling black- 

guard r 

“ God of Gods !” madame muttered, white to her very lips. 
“ But he startled me.” 

Mrs. Dudleigh, leisurely unbuttoning her gloves, looked at her 
with a smile, saying : 

“ You really are growing nervous, Dorothea. Our English 
Friend is asleep and dreaming — ” 

“ In the chair into which he stumbled when he rose from the 
ecarte-table,” nodded madame. “ Behold him !” 

With a quick, noiseless movement she drew aside one of the 
heavy curtains that parted the salon from the boudoir beyond, 
letting in a flood of sickly pink-tinted light from unextinguished 
tapers burning in shrines of pink glass. It was a gaudy little 
Continental boudoir, replete with blue satin - covered furnhure 
and ornate with gilding ; a musky-smelling little bower, sacred 
to nothing but ecarte ; sacrifice made, however, to the religious 
proprieties in the shape of a putty-faced, gaudily-colored plaster 
medallion of the Madonna in a shrine upon the wall, looking 
.simperingly down upon the slumbering features of Our English 
Friend. 

Our English Friend was huddled sidewise in a great velvet 
arm-chair immediately behind the red velvet curtains, and so 
close to them, in fact, that they must have been stirrecJ by his 
breath — touched by his drooping head. Heavy and lumpish was 
Our English Friend, and his breathing was stertorous and irreg- 
ular. He seemed, as far as might be guessed from his present 
invertebrate attitude, a well - built, middle - sized, muscular man 
of twenty-seven or so, and though his blunt features were swollen 
from the effects of the overnight debauch, and his close-curling, 
brownish-red locks lay damp and matted upon his flushed and 
veinous forehead; though his travelling. suit of gray tweed was 
disordered, his collar agape, his necktie loosened and dragged 
awry, the English friend of Madame de Quayros was plainly a 
gentleman. 


OUR ENGLISH FRIEND. 


11 


“ He snores, in effect, this brute,” observed madame, with pro- 
found disgust. “ But Englishmen are always hHe. They cannot 
even be drunk gracefully.” 

The sleeping man stirred and murmured. Perhaps a current 
of fresher air coming from the salon brought with it some quick- 
ening of the sluggish blood — some lightening of the fumes ob- 
scuring his drugged brain. 

“ He dreams and grimaces, as you see ; but he will not waken, 
be assured of that.” 

Madame, having listened at the doors of the salon one after 
the other, having drained a second little glass of cognac and 
lighted a second cigarette, had rejoined her partner, who stood 
absorbed in meditative contemplation of the features of the un- 
conscious man. 

“He has had his little dose, has Our English Friend.” 

“He looks as though the little dose had been a large one,” 
the other returned. She stretched out her hand towards a min- 
iature dumb-waiter standing within reach of the arm-chair, as if 
about to lift a partly emptied coffee-cup that stood upon it. But 
Madame de Quayros, anticipating the movement, whipped away 
the vessel in a twinkling. 

“ I gave him neither too little nor too much, if that is what 
you mean.” The voice of madame was hoarse with passion ; the 
Spanish execration that accompanied the words was none the 
less fierce because her accents were necessarily subdued. “Be- 
cause I once lose my presence of mind, my cool a — judgment 
and make one error — one mistake, is it to be always thrown at 
my teeth ?” She moved to the console-table, poured water from 
a glittering carafe, and rinsing the coffee-cup with an unsteady 
hand, poured the contents away to the last drop upon the with- 
ered begonia. “ Is it because this brute — this animal — makes 
love to you that you are careful of him, eh ? Now, now, now,” 
^he went on, hissingly, “ you, who will that geese should be 
plucked with tenderness, and pigs made bacon of so that it hurts 
them not, will you arrange with Our English Friend, or shall I ?” 

“You, if you have the courage,” said the other, contemptu- 
ously. 

“ You know that I have not — not now,” returned madame, fu- 
riously. “If I had it would have been done before. You are 
possessed of the devil this night, I believe, Catherine.” 


12 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


For answer, Mrs. Dudleigh’s white firm hand was stretched 
towards the man in the arm-chair. The hand had glided within 
the lappel of his coat, was being cautiously withdrawn with some 
small object in its grasp, when the victim moved slightly and 
uttered the word “ Mother.” For an instant it seemed as if the 
woman was about to faint She turned deadly pale — she stag- 
gered back, dropping, in the abandonment of her recoil, a small 
roll of notes upon the carpet. But she uttered no cry, for the 
hand of her guardian angel stified the utterance upon her lips. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE BLACK-LEATHER POCKET-BOOK. 

“A THOUSAND devils !” raadame spluttered. “ What have you 
seen ? What have you heard ? Are you mad, Catherine ?” 

“ He said ‘ Mother,’ ” the other returned, shivering, and look- 
ing at her strangely. 

“ He should have said ‘ Idiot,’ ” spit out madame. 

“ I hate that word,” the woman rejoined. “ It has no place 
on the lips of a brute like that, when one has heard it spoken by 
a — ” Her tone changed. “ Have you the money ?” she asked, 
feverishly. 

No need to ask. Madame had pounced upon the notes be- 
fore they could well have reached the carpet. 

“ How much is there ? How much ?” 

“About two thousand francs.” 

“ No more than that ?” 

“ Count them for yourself.” 

“ You are right. No more than that.” 

“ The days of grand coups are over,” madame said, with a sigh. 
“ Men are poorer than they were when I was a young girl. If 
he has gold upon him it will be but a few pieces. However, it 
will be well to search.” 

Philip r 

The name, distinctly spoken, sounded through the room. 

“ Silence, pig I” snarled madame. 


THE BLACK-LEATHER POCKET-BOOK. 


13 


But the slumberous voice was not to be so easily silenced. It 
broke out again : 

Suspense! I carUt hear it! My poor mother! Life or 
deaths the message said!' 

“ Was that a footstep on the landing? Is any one listening at 
the door ?” 

“ I will go and see,” Madame de Quayros whispered back, and 
vanished. 

He moved and groaned and spoke again. 

“Za/e,” he said. Last train gone! Nothing before to- 
morrow morning. Whole night to wait. I'll go out and walk it 
off; I'll go out and walk it off." 

Something delayed the return of Madame de Quayros. The 
confidences of Our English Friend were reposed in the bosom of 
a single listener. 

^Not safe at night in Brussels — man — valuable — property 
about him. Give it^ Philip — take care of. Tell landlord to lock 
it up! Who's to know — I broke the Bank at Homburg ? — 
Who's to know about the six thousand pounds ? Sheer nonsense^ 
I tell you — sheer nonsense." 

The hand of Our English Friend fumbled at his breast with a 
touch as wandering and uncertain as that of a sick man. 

'‘'‘The money's safe^I tell you! Chained to me. Never left 
me day or night since — Homburg? Whaty you won't he con- 
vinced ? Obstinate devil ! Welly if you will have it, take ity and 
be d d to you." 

He rose to his feet and stood upright, breathing heavily, and 
swaying perilously from side to side. His swollen features — his 
blindly staring eyeballs — turned towards the white face, the shin- 
ing eyes, of the listening woman. Suddenly a change came over 
him, the tense muscles of his throat relaxed, his eyelids drooped, 
his head sank backward, his out-stretched arm fell leadenly to 
his side. A long sigh escaped his parted lips. Like one stricken 
with palsy he dropped back into the seat from which he had 
risen. 

As this happened, the woman sank to her knees upon the car- 
pet. She held her breath. She crawled towards the man in the 
chair. Her snake- like movement brought her close to him. 
Breathlessjy she crouched at his knee as she detached from a 
chatelaine she wore a little pair of scissors, a womanly toy, with 


14 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


chased handles and sharp curved blades. Warily she unbut- 
toned the tweed waistcoat of Our English Friend. Sleep — the 
iron sleep of the opiate — had descended upon him. He spoke — 
he moved, no more. There was a faint grating sound — sharp 
steel devouring linen — shearing through silk. The woman 
went about the business as mechanically as an automaton. What 
she did she scarcely seemed to do of her own purpose — of her 
own will. Unflinchingly she put her hand into his breast. 
Slowly, cautiously, she drew to light the treasure hidden there. 

It was a square, somewhat bulky, black-leather pocket-book, 
suspended round the man’s neck by a thin, glistening steel chain. 
Delicately, deftly, the woman opened it, and with practised 
swiftness emptying it of its contents, restored it to its hiding- 
place on his heart. Notes and billets, of this the first glance, 
even in the act of rising to her feet, assured her — billets and 
notes of the banks of France, Germany, and England, to the 
value of a large sum. Bending at the baccarat-table in the light 
of the shaded lamp, she counted the crackling tissue-papers with 
white fingers that scarcely had a tremor in them. Counted 
them twice — counted them three times. And then she lifted 
her head and drew a long, deep breath. 

“ A hundred and forty thousand francs — nearly six thousand 
pounds, English money ! And to think that such a sum might 
have escaped me! To think that such a chance might have 
been missed 1” 

She looked round at the man in the chair. 

“ I have to thank an overdose of morphia and your own im- 
prudence for much, my countryman,” she said. “You might 
have intrusted your treasure to your comrade ; you might have 
placed it in charge of the landlord of your hotel. Your native 
obstinacy is not one of the least of your charms, my English 
Friend.” 

“What is this?” 

Madame de Quayros, always stealthy of foot, having returned, 
was standing behind her. 

“ What is this?” reiterated madame, leaning over and darting 
one crooked white talon at the money on the table. 

“ It means that your often quoted proverb of the reaped field 
is at fault, my dear. In the case of Our English Friend, the 
second harvest is richer than the first.” ^ 


THE BLACK-LEATHER POCKET-BOOK. 


15 


“ Angel ! I must positively embrace you,” thus rapturously 
mac^ame, with watering teeth. 

“ Let us defer that affectionate ceremony till we have settled 
our accounts,” said the other. 

“ Absurd ! How much time have we for the settlement of ac- 
counts ? Do you think that our friend there, when he recovers, 
will take his loss with resignation ? I tell you that there will be 
a hue-and-cry. Money you shall have for present expenses. 
When we meet at Paris, everything else can be arranged. In 
the mean time I will take charge of these notes — these billets — 
strictly in the interests of Our English Friend. Do you not hear 
a’ me?” queried madame, with acerbity. “ Is there to be more 
delay ? Will you give me the money or no ?” 

For answer, Mrs. Dudleigh gathered up the scattered notes 
and thrust them, crumpled together, into the bosom of her dress, 
where madame’s glance followed them meaningly. 

“ I will not give you the money,” she said. 

Madame, backing to the console-table, stretched out her hand 
softly behind her, and possessed herself of something that lay 
there among the debris of the supper — a keen-edged some- 
thing, bright and glittering. * 

“ You will not give me the money, eh ?” she redemanded, 
menacingly. 

“ Some of it, perhaps, but under conditions, and upon my 
own terms.” 

“‘Under conditions and on your own terms?’” madame 
sneered, more like a man-eating tigress than ever now, medi- 
tating a deadly spring. 

“ Put down that knife. Ring, if you like.” For madame, 
abandoning the weapon, had made a movement to the bell. 
“ Call your people — you know there is not one of them who 
would dare to lay a lawless hand upon me. You know the 
weapon that I carry,” said Mrs. Dudlefgh, meeting madame’s 
lurid glare with calm, unquailing eyes. “ You know the sort of 
woman fate and circumstances have made me. You know that 
I could and would, in case of need, use this, and use it well.” 

“This” being a small revolver, ivory-mounted — a pretty toy 
enough for death to lurk in. 

“ A trick of the theatre,” madame said, voicelessly. “ Come, 
explain yourself. What are you going to do ?” 


16 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ I am going to part with you here, to-night, and forever.” 

“ Is this a sudden resolution ?” 

“ It is the outcome of a great deal of reflection on my part, 
most amiable of friends.” 

“You begin to quarrel with your bread and butter somewhat 
late in the day,” madame observed, with another of those fanged 
smiles. 

“ I have quarrelled with my bread and butter for a long while. 
I have quarrelled with the very air I breathe. I have quarrelled 
with the very sun for shining on me,” said Catherine Dudleigh, 
“ through the windows of rooms like this.” 

With unutterable loathing of her companion, of her surround- 
ings, of herself, she looked about her. 

“ I have long been weary of our life of falsehood and impost- 
ure, of treachery and crime,” she said. “Not that I pity our 
victims much — they are all born to one common end, and would 
be fleeced, sooner or later, poor wretches ! by rogues even more 
unscrupulous than ourselves. But I have pitied myself.” 

She leaned one hand lightly upon the table by her side, and 
looked out before her, darkly, as if she looked into the past. 

“ While I have crawled in the Slime of loathsome by-ways,” 
she went on, “ women no purer in heart, no more unstained in 
conscience, no more tenderly reared than I was, have passed me 
by unheeding. And at such times I have cried out to them 
in my heart, ‘ I could have been as good as you if I had had a 
chance like yours. You might have been worse than I am if 
you had led a life like mineJ* Poverty, misery, disgrace, shame 
— each and all of these things I have known from my girlhood 
up. What chance had I ? None ! But I have got my chance 
now, and I am going to make the most of it.” 

“ I think,” said madame, “ that you are going to make your- 
self one fool.” 

“ Perhaps so. I am going to divide this money equally with 
you,” said Mrs. Dudleigh, with a gleam of her old manner, “ be- 
fore we part to-night. After that you are at liberty to strike 
my name out of the books of the Arm, with the appended mem- 
orandum, ‘ Retired from business.’ ” 

She drew the crumpled handful of bank-notes roughly from 
her bosom. As she did so, some small shining object fell 
lightly to the carpet and rolled under the table. But she 


THE BLACK-LEATHER POCKET-BOOK. 


17 


did not see it, and madame had no eyes for anything but the 
money. 

“One-half for you, one-half for me. You see I treat you 
generously, Dorothea.” 

“ Hah !” madame grunted, dexterously fingering the crackling 
tissue papers. “This decision is unalterable, eh? You are really 
going?” 

“ I am really going. Good-bye.” 

“ Bon voyage'' said madame, with a hand on the door of her 
apartment. She gave an ineffable foreign shrug. She nodded 
coolly and left the room. 

As Mrs. Dudleigh raised her heavy mantle from the fioor and 
threw it round her shoulders, the first signs of awakening life 
began to manifest themselves in the streets of Brussels. The 
first sunbeams penetrated into the room. One lighted on the 
forehead of the sleeping man. 

Her eyes lighted on him, too. Softly she approached him 
and drew the displaced curtains again before him, shielding him 
from the day. Then she went to the door, but on its threshold 
she turned and looked back. 

“Another’s wrong dragged me down level with the dust. Let 
my own sin raise me up again. I buy my freedom from a hid- 
eous bondage, my deliverance from a living hell, with the money 
you would have wasted in drink and in play. In whose hands 
shall it meet the better uses? In yours or in mine?" 

Not even a sigh, this time, in answer, from the shrouded figure 
in the chair. 

“ So ends the old wicked life forever,” she said, more gently. 
“ A new life opens before me, a new dawn breaks, bright with 
the promise of better days to come. My English Friend, good- 
bye.” 

Then she went out. As the doors closed behind her, the gilt 
clock upon the mantel-piece struck the hour of five and played a 
tinkling little melody. Long before it had ended its laborious 
runs and flourishes, her retreating footsteps had ceased to echo 
on the stair. 

2 


18 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER IV. 

AWAKENING. 

Morning noises in the streets. Voices calling, carts lumber- 
ing by. A clattering of wooden-soled shoes — probably a band 
of flower-sellers passing on their way to the market of the Grande 
Place. The gruff barking of dogs harnessed to the little carts of 
the milk-women ; the shrill reproaches of their owners, “ Plus 
vite^ Jehan ! Plus vite, Edouard ! MechantJ'' and the thump of 
stout umbrellas upon canine ribs. 

Now comparative silence; a solemn creaking; a measured 
tread of horses’ feet going by. Perhaps a funeral cortege on the 
road to the cemetery. A halting step — maybe that of the old rag- 
picker of yesterday, with his basket on his back. An outburst 
of halloaing — probably a troop of red-cheeked chorister boys on 
their way to the cathedral, under the charge of a priestly usher 
in a black soutane. Now a tremendous jingling — a guard of ar- 
tillery, most likely, returning from the Palace of Laeken to the 
Caserne Elizabeth. They don’t march like soldiers, these Bel- 
gians — brave Belgians ! — but slip and slide unsteadily over the 
stones. 

From a long way off a clock striking six — a musical clock, that 
plays the duet from “ II Trovatore ” with a note here and there 
dropped out like a tooth. 

‘‘Home to our mountains 
Let us return, love !” 

“Uncomfortable, these foreign beds — too short, always, and 
too bumpy. Hung round with sombre, stuffy curtains, sur- 
mounted by canopies nodding with plumes, like hearses out of 
mourning. Green curtains. No — red. Odd that they should 
have changed color since last night! Odd that the window 
should have changed place with the mantel-piece, and that the 


AWAKENING. 


19 


mantel-piece, with the two ormolu candlesticks, should have dis- 
appeared entirely. 

“I slept at the Belle Vue Hotel last night. Is this the 
Belle Vue? Is this myself, with a headache as though a legion 
of imps, armed with red-hot forge-hammers, were beating at my 
brain ? With a raging thirst upon me that impels me to rise 
and grope about for water? With a torpid numbness on me 
that holds me down, that weighs upon my limbs like fetters of 
lead? 

“ A bell ringing somewhere. Somebody must be dead. Per- 
haps the hammering imps are not imps after all, but a legion of 
undertakers knocking nails into a coffin. A coffin for a dying 
woman ! — a coffin for a dead woman ! Old or young ? — I can’t 
recollect ! The headache comes back, raging and tearing with 
the effort to think. . . . Knocking, over and over again. The 
waiter, perhaps — somebody had told the waiter to call him early 
in the morning, for he had to bathe and breakfast and to catch 
the mail for Calais. The English mail, when did it leave the 
Station du Nord? and was Reginald Hawley the man who was 
left behind ? The man with a headache ! — the man who had 
something to remember?” 

More knocking, more ringing, more hammering at the stair- 
case door. As they burst it in the sleeper awoke, tried to shake 
off the numbing drowsiness that held him ; tried to rise to his 
feet, but failed and fell back heavily ; tried again more success- 
fully, and staggered out, dazed and blinking, into the blinding 
light of day, holding by the curtains. At first the room seemed 
full of faces, but by-and-by the number dwindled to three or 
four. One of them familiar, belonging to the grasp upon his 
hand, the arm upon his shoulder, the friendly voice in his ears. 
Others, three ; dough-colored, clean-shaven ; two or them topped 
with soldierly forage caps, and surmounting neat uniforms of 
braided blue ; the third belonging to a bald-headed official in a 
black frock-coat and gray trousers. 

“ The birds have flown, monsieur.” 

“It would appear that there has been an exodus, my Gas- 
pard.” 

“ It will be as well to make a reconn oissance, monsieur.” 

“ As a matter of form, but you will find nothing.” 


20 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


The heavy tread of thick -soled boots over the carpet — the 
opening and closing of a door. 


“ Hawley ? Dear old fellow !” 

“ Philip?” 

“ Run to earth ; hunted down ; found at last ; and thank God 
for it !” the friendly voice said, between laughter and tears. 

“ Am I drunk or dreaming ? What has happened ? My head 
— spinning round and round.” 

The boy (for he was hardly more) supported Hawley to a chair, 
and stooped over him in genuine sympathy and alarm. 

“ He doesn’t hear me ! He doesn’t see me ! He doesn’t speak 
to me ! What can be the matter with him ?” 

In his distress, he looked round at the bald man in the frock- 
coat. The bald man was ready to meet the emergency. 

“ Milord will allow me.” Turning the chair so as to face the 
windows through which, the blinds having been drawn up, the 
warm spring sunshine came streaming. “ The carafe there — on 
the side -table. A thousand thanks, milord. If milord will 
sprinkle the forehead of his friend, at the same time blowing 
upon it, the result will be favorable to the wishes of milord. 
Observe, then ” (lifting the eyelids of the patient, one after an- 
other, with an air of genuine scientific interest), “ how strongly 
the pupils are contracted. That is one of the principal effects of 
an overdose of the drug usually employed in these cases. But 
see ! the friend of milord revives already.” 

Revived enough to grasp his friend’s hand, to stammer inco- 
herent answers to his eager questions, to Stand upright and walk 
up and down at last, leaning on the boyish arm. 

“ Saw you leave the hotel last night, tried to follow you, got 
lost among some confounded turnings and had to come Wk like 
a fool. Sat up all night, worried the landlord to desperation. 
He thought me mad, or a dry-nurse in trousers, until I explained, 
and then he woke up and behaved like a Belgian brick,” the 
young fellow said, flushing. 

“ You explained to him ?” Reginald Hawley repeated, dazedly. 

The other looked at him anxiously. “ How you’d had a cable- 
gram from England to say that your mother was dangerously ill, 
and how you’d pelted off to the station like mad, only to find 


AWAKENING. 


21 


that the last train had 2 jone, and the next mail might be expected 
to start at seven in the morning — ” 

“ I remember,” said Reginald Hawley. He drew a long breath. 
“ There was a whole night of suspense before me — the anxiety 
was more than I could bear. I said I would go out and walk it 
off. I remember.” 

He moved away from the supporting arm and continued his 
walk alone. With his disordered hair, his disordered dress, his 
sodden face and bloodshot eyes, he made a sorry picture. 

“ I went out and walked about,” he repeated. 

The younger man looked at him eagerly. 

“I met a man I knew — De Hamel — little fellow in the 
Guides.” 

I know. You were seen with him last night. When things 
grew desperate we went and hunted him out. He was beastly 
drunk, but he gave us the clew we wanted.” 

“ It was he who brought me hpe. We had a bottle of cham- 
pagne or two. ... I wanted to forget the worry that was tearing 
me. . . . You understand? Then he said, ‘Come with me; I’ll 
show you a place where we can have a quiet rubber of ecarte. 
I’ll introduce you to a handsome woman. I went with him, I 
saw her ; she was a handsome woman, by Heaven !” He struck his 
clinched fist upon the table. “ Not the sort of woman one would 
have expected to meet in a gambling-hell,” he went on, with a 

hoarse laugh. “ Proud as a princess of the blood. D n her I” 

Sir Philip Lidyard and the bald headed official exchanged 
glances — a questioning glanc6, which said “ Doesn’t he know ?” 
and a superior glance with a faint trace of contempt in it, which 
said plainly enough, “ Wait. He is stupid at present, but by-and- 
by he will find out, and then — ” 

Sir Philip was too much in earnest to wait. He looked at 
Reginald Hawley, who was now sitting in a chair by the table, 
with one arm lying upon it and his head sunken on his breast. 
In another moment his anxiety betrayed itself in words, 

“ You played ecarte last night,” he broke out. ^‘Did you win 
or lose? Hawley, tell me — . What about the money?” He 
crossed the room to Hawley’s side, he grasped his shoulder and 
shook it, in the heat of his agitation. “ What about your Hom- 
burg winnings ? What about the six thousand pounds ?” 

Then, and not till then, Hawley remembered. He glanced 


22 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


down, noting for the first time the disorder of his dress. He 
put his hand into his breast and drew out a black-leather pocket- 
book, attached by a stout swivel to a thin steel chain. 

The pocket-book was empty ! 

The bald-headed man and Sir Philip exchanged glances again. 
“ As might have been anticipated,”the bald-headed man expressed 
dumbly, and Sir Philip answered back, “ Quite so.” 

The man who had been robbed was the first to break the silence. 

“ Why don’t you call me an idiot ?” he said, hoarsely, looking 
towards Sir Philip. “ Why don’t you call me a pig-headed fool? 
Pve been both. Though you — you might have stopped my go- 
ing out last night. Couldn’t you see I was mad ? Mad with 
suspense and worry, you who call yourself my friend ! Though 
why should I blame you ?” he said, meeting the silent reproach 
in the other’s eyes. “ My own obstinacy — my cursed bad-luck, 
are to blame ; not you.” 

He looked at the empty pocket-book and weighed it in Kis hand. 

“I’ve been a poor devil all my life. A younger son on a beg- 
garly pittance. Duns, debts, and disgrace, the burden of a tune 
that seems likely to go on forever. That night at Homburg I 
risked all I had, a pitiful hundred pounds, on color. I won. I 
piled it on, every penny. I won again and again. The bank 
was broken. I walked out of the Kursaal a rich man. I’d got 
the chance I had always wanted — the nest-egg that might hatch 
out millions by-and-by. I carried it about me wherever I went ; 
it never left me day or night. I was like a child with a new toy 
— a girl with her first love-letter — a mother with her first-born. 
The money was my hope, my all. And I’ve been robbed of it !” 

He ended there, and got up shivering, as if with cold. The 
effects of the drug under the influence of which he still labored, 
of the mental and physical shock he had sustained, were visible 
in the deep lines graven about his mouth and on his forehead 
and round his bloodshot eyes. 

“ Why should we stop here ?” he asked, feverishly. “ What 
are we waiting for? Let us go back to the hotel. Let us go to 
the police station. It may not be too late to trace the thieves 
— to recover the money !” He put his hand to his head, he looked 
vacantly round. “ I haven’t got my hat,” he said ; “ I can’t go 
out without my hat.” 

The bald-headed official, stimulated by a certain crisp and crack- 


AWAKENING. 


23 


ling acknowledgment of services rendered, which had stealthily 
found its way from Sir Philip’s palm into his own, instantly busied 
himself with tremendous zeal in the recovery of the missing head- 
gear, summoning blue - coated subordinates to aid in the search, 
rummaging in dusty corners, diving under tables. “ Just Heaven ! 
The hat was nowhere to be found ! But, behold ! here a bijou 
— a trinket — which might, or might not, be the property of the 
friend of milord.” 

The friend of milord took it from the extended palm of the 
official. It was a plain gold locket. It had been trodden on, 
and the hinges were broken, so that it fell open in his hand. It 
had been made to hold two portraits. From one of the little 
crystal ovals, set in a shining frame, the eyes of a handsome 
woman looked o.ut and met his own. He knew the face again. 
He looked at it an instant, then thrust the locket in his breast, and 
went away bareheaded from the House of Shadows with his friend. 

A telegraphic message was waiting for him at the hotel. He 
took it, and opened it. It told him that the one creature in the 
world who had loved him was dead — the last link that bound 
him to home was broken. 

He shook his head when Sir Philip urged him to return with 
him to England. Their paths lay in different directions, he said, 
and he had work to do in Brussels. No need to ask what the 
work was. 

To trace the stolen money ! To hunt down the thieves — the 
thief ! And no argument, no entreaties, no representations of 
the hopelessness of such an endeavor, were strong enough to turn 
him from his purpose. So they parted. 

He went late one night, and looked up at the windows of the 
house in the Place du Congres. No light shone behind them, 
no changing pageant of shadows moved across the blinds. 

Big drops of rain plashed on the pavement. The moon, a pale 
fugitive, fled away southward, with black storm-clouds chasing 
her, and a shrill wind baying at her heels. The night was over- 
cast and threatening, but not so threatening as the face of the 
man. He clinched his hand, and shook it in the air, as he looked 
up at the blind windows, and thrust it in his breast again as he 
turned away. 

And the rain came down heavily, and blotted out the House 
of Shadows in an instant. 


Bool? n. 

GROWING-TIME, 


CHAPTER 1. 

THE KAVANAGHS. 

Seven English miles inland from the wild tumbling water, 
the jagged headlands and wave-bitten sandstone cliff-ranges of 
the Norfolk coast ; seven miles straight as the crow flies, across 
a noble wooded country ; over villages nestling in the shadow of 
ancient flint-built churches with stately square towers, reared in 
the stormy mediaeval times ; over an old Roman encampment on 
the crown of a sandy heath, where the north-east wind lies in 
wait for the traveller on most days of the year, with a blowsy 
greeting ; through tall gates, guarded by lichen-spotted heraldic 
monsters ; up a mile-long avenue of noble Spanish laurels ; past 
a long stretch of well-fenced meadow land ; past a paddock, shad- 
owed by great elms ; past a swinging flve-barred gate ; past the 
gardener’s cottage and the dairy-house kept by the keeper’s wife. 
And the ivy-mantled walls, the gray towers and quaint twisted 
chimneys of Selbrigg Hall rose up to view against the sombre 
background of a dense plantation of Norwegian firs. 

From the front view of the Hall not a flower was visible, not 
even a standard rose-tree impinged upon the smooth simplicity 
of the stretch of emerald lawn, shadowed here and there by no- 
ble beeches — from which the time-worn faqade of the noble old 
Tudor mansion reared itself, flashing back the sunlight from its 
deep mullioned casements, crowned at its summit with a stone 
parapet, in which an inscription had been cut out, or rather left 
out, by the founder, so that the words 


(BloHa 2)eo in JEicelsls 


THE KAVANAGHS. 


25 


might stand written in sky-letters of changing hues, as long as 
the house itself should hold together. 

The house was built with wings. It formed, in fact, three 
sides of a parallelogram, the missing side of the geometrical fig- 
ure being represented, after an extended fashion, by the south 
wall of an antique garden, beyond which the roofs of the stable- 
buildings were seen. Into this garden looked almost all the 
rearward windows of the house. 

The race of the founder had long been extinct. The vaults in 
Ketton Old Church were gorged with their coffins of ancient 
stone and more modern lead. The Hall had had many owners. 
For the last three generations it had been the country-seat of the 
Kavanagh family. 

Of that family but two male representatives existed — Colonel 
Kavanagh, the present proprietor of the Hall, a retired officer of 
the East Indian Staff Corps, and a younger brother, of wandering 
proclivities and eccentric habits, from whom, at the period of the 
story’s opening, no personal communication had been received 
for many years. That he was alive was proved from time to 
time by the periodical presentation of drafts upon his London 
agents signed with his well-known scrawl, and forwarded by the 
representatives of European banking firms in different quarters 
of the globe. An income of five hundred a year — a modest fort- 
une — inherited by him as a younger son, enabled George Kav- 
anagh to indulge his nomadic proclivities to their fullest extent. 
Different European countries yielded up proofs of his existence 
from time to time. Lands untrodden yet by the professional ex- 
plorer had known the impression of his wandering steps. He 
was not a collector of curiosities ; he had no special craze for en- 
tomological, botanical, or zoological pursuits. He was no sports- 
man, but a hunter in one sense of the word — an indefatigable 
hunter of human beings. From his earliest years the strange, 
wandering race known throughout the habitable world as the 
gypsies had owned a special fascination for George Kavanagh. 
While still a boy, he had in some inexplicable way attained to 
intimacy with the wandering race whose strongest instinct is the 
instinct of clanship, whose strongest passion is that of hatred of 
the Gentile and the stranger not to them in blood allied. Familiar 
with the gypsy language, well acquainted with the gypsy charac- 
ter and mode of life, George Kavanagh mingled with the gypsies 


26 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


as one of themselves. On Brazilian heaths, on Russian pasture- 
lands, on the sandy shores of Barbary, on the plains of Bohemia, 
in Spanish mountain -gorges, among Himalayan hill-ranges — 
wherever these wandering people pitched their tents, he, had 
shared their shelter and eaten of their bread, listened to their 
stories and taken part in their councils. He had already publish- 
ed, at St. Petersburg, a collection of folk-tales and gypsy legends 
which had been reprinted in London, and had won some favorable 
notice from the English press. He was, it was rumored, collecting 
materials for a large work upon the varieties of gypsy dialects 
in use throughout the civilized world. There were other and 
wilder reports than these. He had been captured and sold for a 
slave in Moorish dominions ; he had escaped, rejoined his roving 
friends, and been elected one of the heads of a tribe ; he had 
been united in matrimony (after the gypsy fashion) to a tawny 
daughter of the Romas, who had presented him with three or 
four bouncing chals and a chavi or two. But of late years the 
tongue of rumor had been silent with regard to that eccentric 
vagabond, George Kavanagh. 

The colonel was remarkable for no peculiarity, except that of 
never quarrelling with his neighbors and invariably maintaining 
a steady level of popularity in the county. A good-humored, 
pleasant-mannered, courteous English gentleman, with military 
uprightness in his bearing and a military simplicity in his punct- 
ual habits. Deeply tanned by burning Indian suns, prematurely 
gray from the effects of Indian fevers, active and vigorous still, 
though his sword-arm, crippled many years past by a blow from 
a Persian sabre in the war of 1857, hung stiff and nearly useless 
by his side; with a child’s guileless simplicity looking out of his 
bright blue eyes, with a school-boy’s appreciation of life in its 
harmless, pleasant out-of-door phases ; a man whose open nature 
made him unconscious of the existence of the artificial qual- 
ity of tact in others, and incapable of employing it for him- 
self. 

Who, in Othello’s place, would have admired the strawberry 
handkerchief in Cassio’s possession and dimly remembered hav- 
ing seen one like it somewhere, but have dreamed of nothing 
more. Who, iij Lear’s situation, would never have thought of 
putting inconvenient test-questions to his family, but would have 
taken their affection for granted and gone comfortably to sleep 


THE KAVANAGHS— CONTINUED. 


27 


in his easy-chair. Who liked his horses and dogs as heartily 
as he hated law and lawyers. A kindly, honest, commonplace, 
somewhat stupid English gentleman. Nothing more remarkable 
than that. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE KAVANAGHS— CONTINUED. 

Colonel Kavanagh had married twice. His first wife had 
been a younger daughter of one of the greater county families, 
a delicate, sensitive, hysterical creature, upon whose feeble con- 
stitution the Indian climate had told with fatal effect, and who 
had died at an obscure hill-station in the Punjaub, a few years 
after her marriage, leaving the somewhat bewildered widower in 
sole charge of their daughter, a baby-girl of two years old. The 
colonel brought the child — a pale-faced, long-legged little creat- 
ure, clinging to her Indian nurse, shy of her father, rejecting 
with positive terror all advances made by well-meaning strangers 
— home to his native Norfolk, and placed her in charge of his 
family. Then he returned to his regiment. Five years later his 
father and mother were dead ; his young daughter required a 
guardian and protector ; Selbrigg Hall wanted a master, and he 
was tired of soldiering under a scorching sun. The colonel re- 
tired from the army and came home again, this time to stop for 
good. 

Perhaps he had not thought much about the child — his life 
had been a busy one ; but he had kept all her letters — from the 
first illegible hieroglyphics to the more shapely pot-hooks and 
hangers, from straggling round-hand capitals to the latest school- 
girl scrawl — religiously in his desk, and her photograph in a 
camphor-wood frame, unsavory to the taste of white ants and 
other voracious entomological marauders, on his dressing-chest. 
When at last they met upon the hearth of the oak dining-room 
at the Hall, where, in genial recognition of the Anglo-Indian’s 
susceptibility to chill, a bright fire crackled, though the season 
was September, he was almost startled by the child’s unlikeness 
to himself and to her mother. 

‘‘ Is it papa ?” she said, in a small, self-possessed tone, looking 


28 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


at him with wide hazel eyes, and holding out a small hand to be 
shaken. “ You’re not very like your photograph, but, of course, 
you must be papa ?” 

The colonel somewhat confusedly testified to the correctness 
of the conjecture. Then he hesitated. He knew he ought to 
embrace his daughter. Parental precedent pointed to this as 
the correct thing. 

“ Will you give me a kiss, Rosalind ?” he asked, stooping down 
his tall grizzled head to a level with the golden-brown one. 

“ I suppose I ought,” the child said, hesitating ; “ but I’m not 
much used to kissing people, and we’re not very well acquainted, 
though, of course, we shall understand each other better by- 
and-by.” 

“I hope so,” the colonel acquiesced. 

“And then things won’t seem so strange,” said Rosalind. 
“May I ring for some tea? Grandmother always used to ask 
her visitors whether they would have some tea ? and when they 
said ‘ No,’ grandpapa used to say, ‘ Try something stronger 1’ 
Will you try something stronger — if you don’t like tea?” 

The confused colonel murmured that he would try some tea, 
and the tea was brought by the old butler, who looked from his 
master to his master’s daughter and back again, and retired with 
faint indications carved on his wooden countenance of the first 
grin that had hovered there since the house became a. bouse of 
mourning. 

However, the Colonel’s bewilderment augmented at dinner, 
when Rosalind presided at one end of the long table and enter- 
tained him with conversation of the kind she supposed best 
suited to his years and mental standing. But when the hour of 
bedtime came, and the long row of servants filed in, taking their 
accustomed places, while the small mistress of the household 
read family prayers out of a large book — not without stumbling 
over her obsolete petition for the welfare of his most sacred 
majesty, King George HI., and his illustrious consort, Charlotte ; 
and finally bade him good-night in the hall, accepting her bed- 
room candlestick from his hands with the gravity of a chate- 
laine of the Middle Ages receiving a gage from the hands of a 
trusty squire, the simple soldier retired to the smoking-room 
utterly confounded. 

“Send for Rosalind’s nurse,” the voice of common -sense 


THE KAVANAGHS—CONTINUED. 


29 


prompted, and Dawes, her duties of disrobing over, was sum- 
moned. The colonel questioned her as to his daughter’s habits, 
tastes, temper, and general character, and received the answer 
that Miss Rosalind was a quiet little lady who gave very little 
trouble. To be sure, she was what my lady had called “ re- 
served ” in her manners and particular in her notions. 

“ My — Miss Kavanagh had a strong affection for her grand- 
mamma ?” the colonel supposed. 

Dawes thought a moment, and said, cautiously, “ Not more 
than common.” 

“ For her grandpapa ?” the colonel suggested, feeling his way. 

Dawes shook her head and said, “ Not beyond ordinary.” 

“ For her governess, then ?” the colonel said, in despair. 

“ She never had one,” Dawes replied. “ My master taught 
her all she knows, History and Latin, French and the Globes, 
astronomical and terrestium. Bless your heart ! — begging your 
pardon, sir — she’s told me about ’em till I know pretty near as 
much as she does.” 

“ Does — she play much with other young people ?” the per- 
turbed colonel hesitated. 

“ Master Philip used to take a deal of notice of her,” Dawes 
responded, “ when him and his mother used to drive over from 
Lidyard Chase. But Master Philip was quite a grown-up gen- 
tleman even then compared with my young lady. And since he 
went abroad, she hardly ever speaks his name. She has set a 
good deal of store in her quiet way by her papa — begging your 
pardon, sir — and on his coming home again. She has led a queer 
sort of life for a child — begging your pardon again — though I 
don’t doubt her grandpa and grandma knew best — ” Dawes 
hesitated, courtesied, and sidled out of the room. 

By-and-by James Kavanagh and his little daughter became 
more confidential, and, in course of speaking of some event 
that occurred in the passage home, the colonel gathered that 
she had never seen the sea — except in the course of a carriage 
drive, and at a distance. He could not be said to realize, but it 
just brushed his consciousness, that the nature of the child had 
been starved and stunted, that her life with the old people at the 
Hall had been a lonely one. So he issued his commands with 
military brevity, and a couple more days found the pair of them 
established in hotel apartments at a fashionable watering-place 


30 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


upon the coast. She put her small hand voluntarily into his as 
they stood together on the sandy beach the morning after their 
arrival, with the waves breaking at their feet and the salt ex- 
panse of the restless ocean spread out before them. Happy 
bare-legged children danced upon the sands, dug pits, and reared 
fortifications within reach of the conquering waves, laughed, 
screamed, and sometimes quarrelled, as youthful Britons will. 

“ Would you like to play with them the colonel said. 

She looked up at him with the great hazel eyes that were like 
neither his own nor her mother’s, and timidly questioned 
“ Why ?” The colonel gave up the idea of solving that prob- 
lem, his legitimate daughter, in despair, and sent off that very 
night to the office of a London newspaper the rough draft of an ad- 
vertisement beginning, “ Wanted, a governess for an only child. 
Salary no object.” In the mean time he read his letters and 
papers on the cliffs or on the sands every morning, while Rosa- 
lind bathed under the superintendence of her nurse, or sat at his 
side reading some unchildish volume or other, to which access 
had not been denied her, or watched the pageant of watering- 
place life that continually passed before them. There was the 
retired ship-captain with his telescope, and the London draper’s 
salesman in semi-nautical costume, and the stout lady with the 
white umbrella and a troop of riotous children, and the thin one 
with the parasol and the maid, and hosts of other types unfa- 
miliaf to the colonel from long absence, fascinating to his little 
daughter from their very newness. 

But chief of all, and foremost in the observant interest of the 
child, was a pale, tall lady in black, who strolled along the cliffs 
every morning, or sat upon the sands, always in the same spot 
and always alone, as though, Rosalind fancied, she was watch- 
ing the horizon for some ship that was late in coming. The 
child so often spoke of her, and watched for her so constantly, 
that Colonel Kavanagh began, half unconsciously, to watch for 
her too. By-and-by it was discovered that she was staying at 
their own hotel. That she was a widow was evident by her 
dress. She was a handsome woman, “ and looked as if she had 
had her troubles,” to quote Dawes. 

Before the question of the governess had been settled, the 
colonel’s problem was likely to have been settled in another 
way. His little daughter fell dangerously ill of diphtheria. 


THE KAVANAGHS—CONTINUED. 


31 


“ It would be death to the child to remove her,” the doctor 
said. Colonel Kavanagh silenced the protestations of the man- 
ager of the hotel by offering to rent the whole floor upon which 
his rooms were situated. The hotel-keeper, flnding he had to 
do with a wealthy man, gave in with a good grace. 

But there was another difficulty. It had become absolutely 
necessary, in view of the serious aspect which the illness had as- 
sumed, to secure the services of a properly qualifled nurse. A 
telegram addressed ta the matron of the hospital at Norwich 
met with a discouraging reply. There was an epidemic of fever 
at present in the town ; the services of her whole staff of nurses 
were insufficient for the local need. It would be possible to 
procure the necessary aid from one of the great nursing institu- 
tions in London, but at least ten or twelve hours must elapse be- 
fore the arrival of a skilled attendant. And in the mean time 
the case grew desperate — in another hour it would be absolutely 
necessary to perform the operation of tracheotomy. But the 
telegram was despatched, and the colonel, with a heavy heart, 
sat down and waited for the reply. 

“ A lady, sir, would like to speak to you.” 

The colonel raised his worried head from his hand, and took 
the card the waiter offered him, with waiterly grace, upon a dingy 
salver. The name upon the card was : 

“Mrs. Saumez.” 

The colonel yawned drearily, and said, “ Show the lady in.” 

The lady was shown in. The colonel had been prepared to 
meet an entire stranger ; the colonel was relieved and surprised. 
It was the lady in black ; the lady they had noticed walking on 
the cliffs or sitting on the sands ; the lady in whom the sick child 
had manifested such an unaccountable interest ; a tall, graceful 
woman, of nearly thirty ; a woman of distinguished appearance, 
whose remarkable beauty was not neutralized, only somewhat 
sharpened, by the wasting touch of suffering, mental or physical, 
visible in her face. She introduced herself to the colonel with 
the easy grace of a well-bred woman; she gently solicited his 
confidence and won upon his reserve by her unaffected sympathy 
with him, and her unaffected sorrow for the child. 

“ I used to watch her upon the beach day by day,” she said. 
“ We have spoken to each other sometimes, meeting in the pas- 


82 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


sages ^or on the stairs. I am a lonely woman, and your little 
daughter interested and attracted me from the first. I once 
knew a child who would have been about the same age, who 
might have been like her, if — ” Her voice broke and faltered, 
her eyes turned away to hide the tears that had risen in them. 
Mentally the colonel supplied the missing end of the sentence. 
“ If she had lived to grow up,” and added, looking at her mourn- 
ing dress, “ her own child, no doubt. Poor woman !” 

“ I heard of your little daughter’s illness for the first time to- 
day,” the lady went on. “No need to tell you that the real 
nature of the complaint — being an infectious one — has been 
carefully concealed by the landlord from the knowledge of other 
visitors staying in the hotel. It doesn’t matter how the news 
reached me. I heard, again, that the case is serious enough to 
call for an operation; that it has become necessary that the 
services of a professional nurse should be obtained without de- 
lay. I have had hospital experience in my time ; I have nursed 
patients stricken with diphtheria back to life under the doctor’s 
orders. Let me place that experience now at your disposal. Let 
me nurse your little girl !” 

She was earnest in her offer of attendance on the child. She 
asked to be shown the sick-room. Colonel Kavanagh, in his 
irresolution, could only thank the lady, ring the bell, and ask the 
doctor to step down and decide for him. 

The doctor came, heard the lady’s story, and, being a sensible 
Scotchman, gratefully accepted the lady’s offer. She glided 
away and returned in a dozen minutes, wearing the simple uni- 
form of the sick-room. In the plain cotton gown and serviceable 
apron, with the little frilled cap tenderly sitting on her plentiful 
waves of golden-brown hair, waves streaked even in her womanly 
prime with gray, she looked handsomer than ever. The doctor, 
who had a professional eye for a fine woman, looked at her from 
head to foot, nodded approvingly, and grunted, “You’ll do.” 

They went up-stairs, the colonel following. The doctor opened 
a door leading into the first-floor drawing-room, rented by Colo- 
nel Kavanagh. The sick-room opened out of the drawing-room. 
A linen sheet, dipped in some disinfecting fluid, had been hung 
before the door-way. The doctor pushed it aside and motioned 
the new nurse to enter. 

She went in. The rays of the setting sun shone through the 


HOW COLONEL KA VANAGH SOLVED THE PROBLEM. 33 


slats of the drawn Venetian blinds. The crash of waves break- 
ing- upon the pebbles of the beach, the laughter of the children 
at play upon the sands, penetrated with the sunbeams into the 
quiet room where Rosalind lay. From the bed came a hoarse, 
gasping sound. Dawes stood there with a frightened face, sup- 
porting the child, whose frail, small body lay huddled limply back 
against her arm. The wide, bright eyes opened as the stranger 
drew near; something like a gleam of recognition dawned in 
them before they closed again. For an instant the new nurse 
wavered ; she grew pale ; she put her hand to her heart, moved 
by some inexplicable emotion ; the next moment she moved to 
the bed and deftly took the place of the wearied attendant, slip- 
ping her arm under the body of the child, and raising it into an 
easier position. Experience, calmness, self-reliance spoke in her 
every gesture. As she bent her head down over the child, sooth- 
ing it with gentle touches and tender words, the professional eye 
of the doctor seized, for the first time, upon a resemblance which 
was afterwards to serve many observers with food for comment. 
The doctor was betrayed into an unguarded exclamation, couched 
in the broadest of broad Scotch accents : 

“My certie!” cried the doctor; “but the resemblance is juist 
extraordinarry. They micht be muither and child !” 


CHAPTER III. 

HOW COLONEL KAVANAGH SOLVED THE PROBLEM. 

The operation was successfully performed. Rosalind recov- 
ered, thanks no less, as the doctor insisted, to his own skilful 
treatment and her own naturally healthy constitution, than the 
indefatigable nursing of Mrs. Saumez. The colonel’s gratitude 
was profound. How to find the best way of expressing it with- 
out wearying its object with repetitions, became a second prob- 
lem which he found as difficult to solve as the first. 

His little daughter’s passionate devotion to her new friend 
knew no bounds. She was chary of expressing it. Hers was 
not the demonstrative affection of ordinary childhood, but some- 
thing deeper and stronger by far. Unused to tenderness, she 


34 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


turned to this new warmth shed upon her as a plant reared in 
darkness would turn to the light of the sun. And Mrs. Saumez, 
on her part, manifested a no less remarkable interest in, and de- 
votion to, the child. 

Meanwhile, and before the date of the Kavanaghs’ departure 
had been formally fixed on, answers began to arrive in shoals to 
the colonel’s advertisement. Armies of intellectual agriculturists 
— with the most unimpeachable references, and the clearest pos- 
sible views on the management of childhood — manoeuvred be- 
fore the mental eye of the perturbed colonel. There was the 
experienced family governess, who had taught so many young 
ideas to bud in her time that the majority of them had burst 
their sepals and left off blossoming for good ; there was the in- 
experienced young lady, obliged for family reasons to leave 
home, and anxious for a trial; there was the Cambridge 
graduate, ready and willing for an adequate monetary return 
— stipend, she called it — to impart half a dozen dead lan- 
guages, the rudiments of as many sciences, and the germs of all 
the arts to Rosalind by the most approved oral method in the 
shortest possible time. The writing-table at which the colonel 
sat was strewn with applications in the genteelest possible hand- 
writing, couched in the most refined and elegant language. Sup- 
posing he engaged the experienced family forcer, or tried the 
anxious experimenter, or admitted the Cambridge crusher to the 
bosom of his family, and she didn’t do ? What then ? Would 
he be able to muster the courage to tell her so and send her 
about her business ? A cold perspiration broke out all over him 
at the bare idea. The doctor entered opportunely. Before that 
sagacious Scotchman the puzzled colonel laid the problem in all 
its knottiness. The doctor indicated his title to the possession 
of the national attribute by solving the problem once for all. 
The doctor, before the colonel could stop him, swept up the 
whole pile of applications in one enormous double fistful, crum- 
pled them mercilessly together, and hurled them bodily into the 
yawning grate. 

“ Guivernesses !” cried the doctor, “ to — Cupar with the guiv- 
ernesses ! It’s no’ a guiverness the lassie wants, its — ” 

He beckoned the colonel to the window, motioning him to 
keep silence. In silence the colonel looked out upon the balcony 
veranda that ran round the first story of the hotel. It was bright 


HOW COLONEL KAVANAGH SOLVED THE PROBLEM. 35 


with flowers, cosey with comfortable seats, shaded by a prettily- 
striped awning from the, glare of the sun. The wide sea 
stretched beyond it, panting like some sleeping creature in the 
scorching heat of noon. 

Mrs. Saumez sat upon a low chair before the window of Rosa- 
lind’s room, holding the child upon her knees. Wearied out by 
the _heat, to which her recent illness made her more suscep- 
tible, she had fallen asleep in the arms that supported her. The 
extraordinary resemblance between the downbent face of the 
woman and the upturned face of the sleeping child struck the 
colonel for the first time, and came upon the doctor with a new 
surprise. But he had something to say, and he said it. 

“ It’s no’ a guiverness yon lassie wants, it’s a muither. It’s 
no’ a guiverness ye’re wanting.” He probed the puzzled colonel 
in the ribs with a scientific finger. He chuckled in enjoyment 
of his own sagacity as he said, “ It’s a wife !” 

The colonel looked at the doctor in astonishment. The doctor 
softly’closed the window and led him, as carefully as though he 
had been a patient who had just undergone a serious operation, 
back to his chair. The doctor placed, one by one, before him, 
all the necessary requisites for writing a letter; the doctor in- 
vited him, with a wave of the hand, to write one then and there. 
The colonel hesitated a moment, cast a glance at the fireplace 
snowed up with scattered applications, hesitated again, then 
seized the proffered pen. For the next ten minutes nothing was 
heard but its regular scratching over the paper and the muffled 
accents of the oracle dictating. The letter came to an end, the 
colonel signed his name with a flourish, and then fell back ex- 
hausted in his chair. 

“ Suppose it all comes to nothing in the end ? Suppose she 
won’t have me after all ?” he feebly ejaculated. The doctor re- 
plied by clapping the letter into an envelope and presenting it 
before him ready for the address. The colonel addressed It to 
“ Mrs. Saumez.” 

The doctor rang the bell and delivered the document to the 
waiter. The deed was done. 

Early next morning she walked in her accustomed place read- 
ing a letter. She read it more than once before she tore it into 
fragments, letting them flutter from her fingers one by one into 


36 


DRAGON’S TEETH 


the depths below, as she stood upon the verge of the cliff path- 
way, looking out to sea. 

“ Is this the chance she said, dreamily. “ Does the new life 
only begin from to-day ?” 

As the last morsel of the torn letter dropped from her hand 
she spoke again. 

“ Happiness, peace, prosperity. All these things mine, if I 
only put out my hand and grasp them. What deters me ? Fear 
of staining an honorable name by taking it upon me ; of bring- 
ing across an honorable threshold memories of guilt and shame; 
or shadowing your young life, image of my lost angel, by asso- 
ciation with a past like mine !” 

The morning mists dispersed before a steady breeze, blowing 
from the south-west. The morning sun shone down in splendor 
upon the transfigured earth, upon the changing sea. From its 
nest in the clover, only a few paces away, a lark sprang up and 
soared away into the burning blue overhead, singing jubilantly. 

“ Over and done with — put away, buried and forgotten,” she 
said. “ Its grave is deep enough. Why not let the past rest ?” 

As she said this the colonel and his little daughter came into 
sight, climbing the hilly path-way hand in hand. “ We have 
come for our answer, Rosalind and I,” the colonel said. 

The child ran \o her and clasped her about the waist. She 
stooped and kissed the child ! 


CHAPTER IV. 

TWELVE YEARS AFTER. 

On a certain fine afternoon of the month of September, in 
the year 1886 — exactly twelve years after the events recorded 
in the preceding chapter — a dusty pedestrian, leaving the main 
highway that runs from the city of Norwich through the sec- 
ondary town of Aylsham down to the coast, and striking across 
a healthy strip of common-land belonging to the neighboring 
village of Ketton Old Church, turned in at the gates of Selbrigg 
Hall. 

The woman who had opened the gates looked after the sturdy 


r 


TWELVE YEARS AFTER. 


3V 


figure until it swung out of sight. Strangers frequently visited 
the Hall, which was, in a certain sober way, one of the show- 
places of the county, and the sight of a new face was no rare 
thing with her. But while she had fumbled with her clanking 
keys the visitor had looked about him with the air of a man re- 
newing his acquaintance with surroundings once familiar, had 
glanced through the open door of the lodge into the best par- 
lor, panelled with shining oak and adorned with various cases 
of birds and beasts, stuffed to the utmost pitch of unliken esss to 
Nature, and stopped in passing to notice and pat the blind old 
spaniel, who had shuffled out, contrary to his wont, to sniff about 
the heels of the visitor, and who responded to the greeting by 
barking gruffly and thumping the ground with his veteran tail. 
But the gentleman who had been recognized by the dog was un- 
known to the lodge-keeper, who had kept a mental register of 
the features of everybody who had passed in or out of the lodge- 
gates any time during the last sixteen years. She called back 
the dog, who was deliberately setting out with the intention of 
following him, and went in to her tea. 

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the stranger, 
except the peculiarity of the contrast between his hair, which 
was perfectly white, and his complexion, which was sunburned 
to the deepest shade of copper, tawny as a well-browned meer- 
schaum. He was somewhat below the middle height, and of slight 
yet muscular build. He walked easily, and with the long, elastic 
step of an experienced pedestrian. He wore a shabby suit of 
light-gray tweed, a soft brown felt-hat of an un-English make 
and shape, and carried a stout stick in his hand and a knap- 
sack strapped upon his shoulders. An artist on a sketching 
tour, an itinerant photographer ; the agent in advance of one of 
the minor theatrical touring companies; a traveller in the in- 
terests of an infallible pill or a new illustrated version of 
the Works of William Shakespeare — the white-haired man 
might have been any of these things but for the color of his 
face. 

He walked on at a round pace and with a determined air un- 
til the Hall came into sight ; its gray, time-worn stone contrast- 
ing with the rich autumn hues of its surrounding woods, the 
emerald velvet of its exquisitely-kept lawns. Then he stopped 
short irresolutely, went on again, wavered and stopped once more. 


38 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


He took off his hat and wiped the perspiration from his face 
with a gaudy handkerchief of yellow Indian silk. 

“ Nervous, by the Lord !” he said, with a shade of astonish- 
ment in his tone. “ But who would have expected to find the 
old place so little changed after twenty years ?” His mood al- 
tered — he struck his stick upon the ground almost fiercely. 
“ You’ve only seen the outside of it yet, you fool ?” he said, and 
tramped on. 

The laurel avenue, taking a gentle curve to the left, now 
brought him into view of the east side of the house, the rear- 
ward portion of which looked out upon an extensive garden, 
inclosed by lofty walls of old-fashioned red brick. Here the 
eccentric stranger again came to a stand-still. 

“ There’s the old bedroom,” he broke out, pointing to a case- 
ment on the second floor. “ There’s the old ivy, thick and tough 
— almost as good as a ladder for climbing up and down, or so a 
harum-scarum young rascal used to think, who had a weakness 
for roaming the country when respectable folks were asleep in 
their beds. There’s the window that they had to rivet iron bars 
across — the window of the old study, where the same young 
scoundrel kept his birds’ eggs, and planned mischief, and got 
caned for not being able to cram half a dozen lines of Ovid into 
his addle head. What were the lines that used to bother me 
most of all ? Something about love for the country that breeds 
us and brings us forth: ^ Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine 
cuncios JDucit — ’ Odd,” said the strange man, with a smile, half 
sad, half whimsical, at his own failure to complete the quota- 
tion. “ Where I blundered and broke down more than twenty- 
five years ago I blunder and break down to-day. ^ Ducit — ’ ” 

“ ‘ Ducity et immemores non sinit esse sui P ” added a voice be- 
longing to some unseen speaker at his left-hand. 

“ The devil !” ejaculated the white-haired stranger with the 
sunburned face, surprised into profanity. 

There was a rending and crackling sound. The high hedge 
of laurels parted and gave way. Tlie figure of a man — of a crip- 
ple, supported on crutches — appeared in the aperture, and swung 
itself nimbly out into the middle of the path-way. With a whim- 
sical courtesy it lifted its h%t and bowed to the white-haired man. 

“ Not the devil, ray good sir,” said the voice ; “ a much less 
distinguished personage, I assure you.” 


MR. HOELL BRINNILOW. 


39 


CHAPTER V. 

MR. HOELL BRINNILOW. 

Th^ cripple, in the act of speaking, looked at the white-haired 
stranger with apparent indifference, but with real keenness. The 
stranger returned the look deliberately. 

What did he see? He saw before him the twisted and mis- 
shapen figure of a man who appeared to be some twenty-six or 
twenty-seven years old, but who was, in reality, over thirty. His 
head was deeply sunken between his shoulders ; his arms, long, 
muscular, and powerful, seemed even more disproportionately 
lengthy by reason of the shortness of his neck, and the dimin- 
ished and withered lower limbs that dangled from his body and 
trailed helplessly upon the ground as he moved upon the crutch- 
es that supported him. By some kind compensatory law of 
Nature, it often happens that persons crippled and deformed by 
accidental casualty or hereditary disease, doomed to wear upon 
the active mind, the stirring spirit, the eager intelligence, the clog 
of a feeble, lumpish body till death releases these from their sad 
burden — borne, God only knows how patiently and bravely ! — it 
almost invariably happens that men and women of this sad stamp 
are the possessors of some advantageous personal trait, some re- 
deeming comeliness of limb or feature, some isolated beauty 
which the eyes of those who love them may dwell 'upon, and 
their own harmless vanity cherish to the utmost. But this man 
was doomed to be even less fortunate than his brothers and sis- 
ters in misfortune. If he had been hale and sound, no woman 
who had once looked at him would have turned to look again ; 
no man would have spoken of him as other than an ordinary- 
looking fellow. He had a bullet-head, covered with sandy hair, 
closely' cropped, brushed, and pomatumed to the last degree of 
smoothness. His face, small, insignificant and boyish-looking, 
though marked with the lines of habitual weariness and pain, 
was covered with freckles as sandy as his hair. Under sandy 


40 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


lashes winked his sharp little brownish eyes ; his nose was snubbed, 
pert, and sagacious ; he had wide, thin-lipped mouth, with a 
weak little fringe of sandy mustache trying to grow long enough 
to hide it ; his ears were large, and his teeth, if brilliantly white, 
were ill-set and uneven. 

And yet, commonplace as the features of the crippled gentle- 
man undoubtedly were, he was yet an individual of remarkable 
appearance by reason of his dress. It was early in the after- 
noon, the day was warm and oppressive enough to justify the 
most rigid conventionalist in a cool departure from tlte rigid 
rules which govern the costume of the ordinary Englishman. 
They stood together, not in a fashionable London park in the 
height of the London season, but in the carelessly - kept ave- 
nue of an easy-going country-gentleman’s estate, and yet the 
crippled man, despite his privileged infirmity, was attired with 
punctilious care, and in the very height of the prevailing mode. 
No tailor, not a London tailor, could have adapted the outlines 
of the stylish frock-coat he wore to the unfortunate inequalities 
of the figure it covered. His .linen collar guillotined the wearer 
into irreproachable agonies ; his necktie boasted a blazing dia- 
mond and sapphire pin ; his snowy waistcoat, his trousers — of 
some light gray material, in harmony with the frock-coat — and 
his brilliant patent-leather boots, would have done honor to Bond 
Street or Pall Mall. The cambric handkerchief he flourished was 
heavy with scent ; the bouquet of bavardia that graced his but- 
ton-hole might have been made up that morning in Covent Gar- 
den. The sinewy, freckled hands that grasped his crutches were 
ornamented with several costly rings ; from the slender watch- 
chain that modestly crossed the immaculate waistcoat dangled a 
pendent a’mulet, in the centre of which a handsome brilliant was 
set. And the glossy silk hat which he now replaced upon his 
head — with a smile in which affable condonation of the stran- 
ger’s rudeness in staring, and complacent conviction of his own 
value as an object of contemplation were combined — crowns the 
description of this extraordinary individual. 

“ Look as much as you like,” the smile said ; “ you won’t find 
anything to find fault with, If you ever saw a well-dressed man 
in your life, my seafaring-looking friend with the white hair, you 
see one now.” 

He drew out a dainty little Russia-leather card-case, and, with 


MR. HOELL BRINNILOW. 


41 


the air of fashionable negligence that sat so strangely on him, 
and was so plainly put on with the fashionable clothes he wore, 
extracted therefrom the ordinary parallelogram of pasteboard. 

“ The situation requires an explanation,’^ he said. “ Permit 
me to make it, with the usual accompaniment. As an old friend 
of the family residing here, I am accustomed to make my way 
in or out of the grounds with little ceremony, and by various 
short cuts which render progression, especially in hot weather, 
easier and less laborious. Advancing towards the house by a path 
concealed in the shrubbery, I overhear a classical stranger, in a 
momentary difficulty (even great Homer nodded sometimes, if 
the ancient authorities are at all reliable), on the other side of 
the hedge. What is the result ? I hurl myself into the breach. 
I supply the interesting stranger with the fag-end of a quotation, 
and I offer him my card.” 

He handed the white-haired man the card. The white-haired 
man took it gravely and read the name upon it aloud : “ ‘ Mr. 
Hoell Brinnilow.’ ” 

“ Of Ketton Manor-house,” added Mr. Hoell Brinnilow. “ Sup- 
posing your road to have led you through the village, Ketton Old 
Church, as the guide-book people call it, though from time im- 
memorial it has been known to the inhabitants as plain Ketton, 
you must have passed the Manor-house. A remarkable example 
of mediaeval domestic architecture, some people call it; a tum- 
ble-down old ghost-hutch, according to others ; but the most ap- 
propriate residence imaginable for its present owner. Why ? 
Answer : because, like himself, it leans upon crutches !” With 
which pleasantry, at the expense of his own affliction, Mr. Hoell 
Brinnilow ended, and the white-haired man, leaning on his stick, 
looked at him, not curiously or offensively, but more earnestly 
than before. 

“ Mr. Hoell Brinnilow, of Ketton Manor-house,” he repeated. 
“A son of the old squire’s, I suppose. Mad — ?” 

“ ‘ Mad Brinnilow,’ ” as the people hereabouts used to call 
him,” supplied Mr. Brinnilow, without a moment’s hesitation. 
“ Quite correct. I see you are no stranger to the neighborhood, 
sir.” 

“ I have been a stranger to the neighborhood,” returned the 
other, “ for years.” 

“ Many years ?” hinted Mr. Brinnilow. 


42 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ Twenty years.” 

“ Twenty years !” repeated Mr. Hoell Brinnilow. “ Many 
changes in the place, sir, since you were a visitor here ?” 

“ I was born and bred here,” the white-haired stranger said, 
looking away. “ As to the changes — I don’t know yet — I’m 
almost afraid to guess what they may be.” He looked back 
again. “ The old people — Sir and Madam, as the village people 
used to call them — ?” 

“ Both dead,” Hoell Brinnilow answered, not ungently. 

There was a short silence before the white-haired man spoke 
again. 

“They were old when I went away,” he said to himself. 
“ It’s what might have been expected. The best of us can’t last 
forever,” he went on, looking back at Mr. Brinnilow. “ But you 
spoke of the family living at the house. If I may be permitted 
to ask — I assure you in no spirit of idle curiosity — what family ? 
Whose family ? Colonel Kavanagh’s family, you say ? I knew 
a Captain Kavanagh twenty years ago. He was to have been 
married to a beautiful young lady — one of the Mostyns — ” 

“ And he did marry her,” returned Hoell Brinnilow. “ If you 
were intimate with the family twenty years ago, you should know 
that.” 

“ As for intimacy,” returned the other, “ I can’t say much on 
that score. But one member of the family I knew well enough, 
perhaps to my credit, perhaps not, for he had a queer reputation 
in the county. He was then, as I remember him, a lad about my 
own age. What was his name, now? Was it George?” 

“There was a son of that name,” returned the other. “A 
wild, harum-scarum fellow, a picturesque young vagabond, as I 
remember him, who, about the time of his brother’s marriage, 
ran away from home.” 

“ ‘ A picturesque young vagabond,’ ” repeated the white-haired 
man, with a curious flickering smile that died out upon his keen 
brown face as suddenly as it had appeared. “ That description 
would hardly be suitable to him now, whatever it might have 
been^once. He ran away, eh ? And his friends never heard of 
him again ? Lucky for them, if he was the harum-scarum young 
vagabond you say he was. Lucky for them !” 

“You attribute to me sentiments which I have hardly ex- 
pressed,” said Mr. Hoell Brinnilow, his sallow face crumpling 


MR. HOELL BRINNILOW. 


43 


into a smile. “ The wild younger brother of my good friend the 
colonel was, I have reason to believe, a high-spirited young fel- 
low, to whom, for certain reasons, his home had become unbear- 
able. In plain words, my dear sir, he was in love with his broth- 
er’s wife, or the lady who afterwards became so.” 

The ruddy brown hue perceptibly faded from the stranger’s 
face, as he repeated, earnestly, “ Became so ? Surely you don’t 
mean to say that she is dead ?” 

“ She died seventeen years ago,” said Hoell Brinnilow. 

The strange man lifted his hand to his head. “ Died four 
years after her marriage with the man who loved her and whom 
she loved?” he whispered to himself, in broken tones. “Poor 
girl ! poor Agnes !” 

He waited a moment before addressing Hoell Brinnilow again. 

“ Pardon my troubling you with another question, sir,” he 
said. “ Did the colonel marry again ?” 

“ The colonel did marry again,” the other returned. 

“ His second wife is living ?” 

“ His second wife is living.” 

“ Pardon me once more,” went on the white-haired man, with 
great anxiety, “ but had the second Mrs. Kavanagh been previous- 
ly married ? Was she a widow ?” 

In almost the same words Hoell Brinnilow replied to the ques- 
tion. 

“The second Mrs. Kavanagh had been previously married. 
The second Mrs. Kavanagh was a widow.” 

The white-haired man shifted his stick from one hand to the 
other and tightened the strap of his knapsack over his broad 
chest. “ Thank you for your courtesy in wasting valuable time 
upon a stranger, sir,” he said, lifting his hat with an un-English 
ceremoniousness to Hoell Brinnilow, “ and good-day.” He turned 
and strode down the avenue. 

Before he had taken twenty steps in the direction of the lodge- 
gates, Hoell Brinnilow had performed, mentally, an operation 
which physically he was incapable of. He had vaulted to a con- 
clusion, overleaping the backs of half a dozen bristling doubts in 
the act. As nimbly as he could lay crutches to the ground he 
started in pursuit of the white-haired man. 

“ Holloa !” he shouted. The man looked back and waved his 
hand. “ Stop !” cried Hoell, out of breath. 


44 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


The white-haired man turned and retraced his steps. 

The cripple, recovering his breath with difficulty, held out his 
hand with a frank and cordial gesture, agreeably at variance with 
the fantastic politeness he had exhibited a few moments before. 
He showed his sharp, white teeth in a pleasant smile, and said, 
very distinctly, “ How do you do, Mr. George Kavanagh ? Wel- 
come home I” 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN. 

The white-haired man started as violently as if he had received 
an electric shock. For the second time his astonishment found 
vent in profanity. 

“ No you’re not,” said Hoell Brinnilow, contradicting the as- 
sertion of eternal unpleasantness with a humorous twinkle, 
“you’re saved. You’re saved from making a fool of yourself, 
my good sir. Shall I tell you what you were going to do? You 
were going without a word to anybody. You had made up your 
mind to let it be as though you never had returned. You were 
going to slip away as secretly as you did twenty years ago, with 
the secret of your name and identity still hidden snugly away in 
your own breast. But you couldn’t hide it from me.” He 
tapped George Kavanagh familiarly on the chest. He looked 
up into his face with a knowing and yet ‘a kindly expression in 
his sharp little brown eyes. “You couldn’t hide it from me,” 
he repeated. His thin, sinewy fingers tightened on the lapel of 
George Kavanagh’s coat. “ Come back with me to the house,” 
said Hoell Brinnilow, eagerly. “ Come back and partake of 
fatted veal, you prodigal returned !” 

“ I doubt if I should have much appetite for that kind of fare,” 
George Kavanagh responded. “ Besides, why should I go back ? 
There are strange faces, new voices up at the old house — far 
too new, far too strange for me.” 

“ Come back,” said the cripple, determinedly, not loosening 
his grasp upon the prodigal’s breast. “You shall come back, if 
I have to carry you; you shall come back, if I have to shriek to 
the game-keeper for help, or the gardener — he’s not far off — and 


THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN. 


45 


have you dragged to the house as a suspicious character found 
loitering about with an eye to the family plate.” 

“ Come,” returned the other, “ I won’t drive you to any des- 
perate expedient. I’H go back with you. But in the face of 
such changes as I shall find up there ” — he pointed to the house 
— “ I’d as soon not. You understand. Do you wonder that I 
am so ignorant of things that have happened in my absence ? I 
tell you, I haven’t seen a familiar face, I haven’t heard a familiar 
voice, I haven’t communicated with a creature in whose veins 
runs the same blood as mine, since I went away. Six days ago 
the steamer that brought me from St. Petersburg landed me at 
Hull.” He hesitated a moment, and then went on, “I hardly 
know why I came. Something seemed to be driving me. I 
wanted to look at the old place again ; I wanted to be feeling 
the old ground under my feet as well as seeing it with my eyes. 
I’m a good walker — I made up my mind to tramp every mile 
of the way. It was night when we got into Hull — dark and 
raining. I went to an inn for the night.” He pulled out the 
yellow silk handkerchief and wiped his forehead, repeating, “ I 
went to an inn for the night. I spent a wretched night — a hor- 
rible night — at the inn !” 

Mr. Hoell Brinnilow’s countenance expressed a conventional 
concern at this piece of information. Mr. Hoell Brinnilow’s 
agile mind jumped to the conclusion that Mr. George Kava- 
nagh’s reputation for eccentricity covered the real fact of Mr. 
George Kavanagh’s being a little mad. 

“ Really !” he ejaculated, with the most delicate infiection of 
sympathy. 

“ A devil of a night !” affirmed Mr. George Kavanagh, halting 
a moment to strike his stick upon the ground with the gesture 
that seemed habitual to him. His next words were in the form 
of a question, irrelevant in itself, and which he abruptly ad- 
dressed to his companion without looking him in the face. 
“ Tell me,” he broke out, “ are you superstitious, Mr. Hoell Brin- 
nilow? Do you believe in warnings? Have you any faith in 
presentiments ? Does that strange faculty which the Scotch call 
second-sight appeal to your sense of the ridiculous, or your sense 
of all that is most mysterious and inexplicable in the great 
world men live in, and the little world in which man dwells?” 

“ Am I superstitious ?” repeated Mr. Hoell Brinnilow. “ My 


46 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


dear sir, upon that point I am as great a humbug as my neigh- 
bors. When charitable ladies call upon me and solicit subscrip- 
tions to missionary funds, I contribute my half-guinea at once, 
for two reasons. Reason number one: that I labor under the 
hereditary weakness of never being able to say no to a member 
of the sex feminine. Reason number two : that having relieved 
my mahogany-colored brother of ten-and-six pennyworth of Fe- 
tishism, Tabooishness, Poojah- worship, or Jossery, I may go on 
bowing to the new moon ; picking up cast horseshoes for luck ; 
throwing spilled salt over my shoulder; expectorating when I 
meet a squinting fellow-creature ; shuddering when any one brings 
peacock’s feathers into my house ; and hugging my own bar- 
barous little weaknesses in my own uncivilized little way, in com- 
mon with the rest of my neighbors.” 

“ You acknowledge yourself to be superstitious,” the other 
went on, resolutely ignoring the sly humor in Hoell Brinnilow’s 
tone. “ Come; you haven’t answered the other part of the ques- 
tion. Do you believe in presentiments ?” 

“ The present Age,” Hoell Brinnilow went on, persistently 
maintaining his resolution of dealing with the subject only from 
the whimsical point of view, “ while just as barbarous, as credu- 
lous and gross as any of the Ages — Gold, Silver, Brass, Iron, Pinch- 
beck — that have bubbled themselves away in the universal melting- 
pot of Time, is also an Age in which scientific humbug fiourishes 
like the proverbial green bay-tree. The children of our nurser- 
ies are not children — not even embryo men and women — but 
natural philosophers, on a small scale. When I was a child, I 
believed that a person, who shall be nameless, but who is usually 
represented with horns in the closing scene of our national 
tragedy of Punch and Judy, disguised as a talking anaconda, 
climbed up a sour apple-tree in the Garden of Eden, and cajoled 
our universal mother, with an unripe pippin, into rendering man- 
kind at large liable forever after to the unpleasant contingency 
of dissolution, and subject to the stringent necessity of sartorial 
embellishments. Tell a youngster of to-day that story and see 
what he would say to you ! He didn’t learn his A B C out of 
Mavor’s spelling-book, as you and I did. He picked it out of 
the introduction to the Youth’s Easy Primer to the Nothingness 
of Everything, or the first chapters of a work on the Theory of 
Evolution. He never heard any fables about gardens, or ser- 


THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN. 


47 


pents, or early parents in a state of innocence. He proudly 
points to the protoplasm as the primeval progenitor of poor hu- 
manity, and openly sneers at me for calling a ghost a ghost and 
not an optical delusion. Therefore, if a modern child asked me 
whether I believed in presentiments, I should suspect him of lay- 
ing a trap for me to fall into, and reply plumply, ‘ Not for a 
second.’ But I’ll have more confidence in you. I do believe in 
presentiments to a certain extent. And now, why do you ask 
the question ?” 

Slowly walking up a general rise of the avenue, they had 
reached a point where the ground sloped gradually away be- 
neath them, where the shrubbery grew more scantily, and the 
view of the Hall was uninterrupted by intervening trees. There 
stood the noble old building, gray and peaceful, surrounded by 
its spreading lawns, shaded by its magnificent beeches, flashing 
back the sunlight shaken from the wings of passing birds, with 
its many casements. And George Kavanagh raised his stick and 
pointed to it, looking his companion full in the face. 

“Does the sky look threatening overhead? Does the land- 
scape look dark and sombre ? Does the house look as if an evil 
fate hung over it ?” he asked. 

“ You’re a strange fellow, on my soul,” returned Hoell. “ No. 
A thousand times, no.” He lifted his hat with a slight, grave 
gesture, and said, “ God forbid !” 

“ Amen !” responded George Kavanagh. Then, with a sudden 
startled change of tone, he cried, “ Look there ! Who’s that?” 

As they stood together, looking towards the house, the figure 
of a woman came out of the cool shadow of the woods upon the 
south-west side. She carried a sunshade and wore a plain straw 
garden-hat and a simply-made dress of some neutral tint, that in 
the blinding glare of the sunlight appeared of a much darker 
shade. Crossing the wide sweep of lawn in a diagonal direc- 
tion, coming towards the spot where the two men stood, moving 
with the easy grace, the unstudied self - possession that might 
have been expected of the mistress of the house, a little skye- 
terrier barking and leaping gallantly at her side. 

“ Who is it ?” repeated George Kavanagh, as Hoell raised his 
hat and flourished it gayly, with a boyish brightness breaking 
out over his pinched face, on the instant of seeing her, that re- 
deemed his plainness as nothing had redeemed it before. 


48 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ Who should it be ?” returned Hoell, forgetting his elaborate 
politeness and shaking off the hand that grasped his arm. “ She 
sees me! She’s coming this way. Good- morning ! Good- 
morning!” 

“ My brother’s wife, Mrs. Kavanagh ?” 

“ Your brother’s wife, Mrs. Kavanagh,” returned Hoell, still in- 
tent upon the approaching lady. As he spoke the clear sky 
clouded over for a passing instant, and upon the bright lawn, 
upon the old house, a moment before basking in the sunlight, a 
shadow fell. 

“ See,” said George Kavanagh, hoarsely, pointing as he spoke, 
“her shadow seems to blot the brightness out in an instant. 
This cold wind blowing on my face — I never felt it till she came 
and brought it with her. What does it mean? Why should 
the warning, if it be one, come to me T' 

“ What do you mean ?” the other burst out, turning upon him 
furiously and striking down the pointing hand. “ Are you mad 
enough to think that your infernal warnings and presentiments, 
or whatever else you choose to call them, have anything to do 
with her? Are you mad enough — ?” 

His voice broke and died away ; his face had grown livid ; 
he trembled and shook as he stood there, leaning on his crutch- 
es, a prey, in his weakness and deformity, to some strange and 
terrible emotion. George Kavanagh turned and looked at him 
with concern in his brown face and heartfelt apology upon his 
lips. But Hoell spoke first, and the excuse remained unuttered. 

“ You’re a stranger to that lady, sir,” said Hoell, holding out 
his thin hand. “You spoke on the impulse of the moment. 
You couldn’t tell how sorely the association of ideas, dark, 
threatening, sombre — I quote your own words, sir — with that — 
that lady — would jar upon one who knew — and — respected her. 
She has been among us for twelve years, and your brother’s 
house is the brighter — how much the brighter for her presence 
I leave him to tell you himself. She honors the name she bears. 
She’s a pure, gracious, noble creature, sir, whose touch brings 
healing to the sick, whose voice brings comfort to the sorrowful, 
whose smile brings sunlight into hearts as dark and bleak and 
desolate as — ” He stopped abruptly, and loosened his hold on 
George Kavanagh’s sleeve, to put his hand to his own heart with 
a haggard expression of pain. But in another moment he had 


THE STORY CONTINUED. 


I 


49 


recovered his former look of sly good -humor and his former 
manner of elaborately affected ease, and moved forward upon 
his crutches with his usual halting gait as the lady continued to 
draw nearer. 

“Come and meet her,” said Hoell Brinnilow, looking round 
and motioning his companion to follow him, with a quaint move- 
ment of his chin. “ Come and meet her, you prodigal brother- 
in-law, come and meet her !” 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE STORY CONTINUED IN AN EXTRACT FROM GEORGE KAV- 
ANAGH’S PRIVATE JOURNAL. 

“ Selbriqg Hall, Norfolk, September 11th. 

“I HAVE made it a practice, during a protracted term of- 
travel and adventure, extending over a period of twenty years, 
to record, in a desultory way, the different impressions and ideas 
left upon my mind by the strange situations and positions in 
which I have from time to time found myself, and the difficul- 
ties and perplexities in which I have from time to time been in- 
volved, in a Private Journal, separate from and having no con- 
nection with the Journal containing the detailed narrative of my 
wanderings through strange lands and among strange peoples, in 
search of evidence upon the one great problem, to the partial 
elucidation of which I have given the better part of my life, and 
shall probably devote the remaining portion. I allude to the 
question of the origin of the gypsy race, the question upon 
which so many theories have been advanced by the scholars of 
our own and former times — theories conflicting, and in no case 
convincing, of the actual source of that strange, tawny river, 
which, late in the thirteenth century, rolled before the footsteps 
of Timour and his invading hosts, from east to west, spreading 
its branches over the entire area of civilized Europe, and, indeed, 
penetrating to the remotest corners of the habitable world. 

“ A man with a hobby has no mercy on his fellow-creatures. 
But — perhaps from the custom of association with reserved Ori- 
entals — I have acquired, in a measure, the habit of reticence upon 
4 


50 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


the subject which possesses the greatest interest for me. If it 
should ever be necessary for a second person to consult these 
pages for the purpose of reference or the purpose of informa- 
tion — though such a contingency is hardly likely to arise — and 
that person should feel any curiosity on the subject I have men- 
tioned, he may obtain my published works (in sixteen volumes, 
octavo) by sending to Paris, St. Petersburg, or New York. THe 
London publishers, after one trial, would have nothing to do with 
me or my hobby. Perhaps the London publishers were right. 

“ On the sixth of this month of September I landed from the 
Eussian steamer Volga upon the passenger - quay at Hull. It 
was night, dark and rainy. As I stood with a fellow-passenger 
upon the quay, we were jostled by a gang of roughs. Despite 
the darkness, despite the rain, the men and lads of the neighbor- 
hood engaged in the usual Panderaonic horse-play, which has 
gained for the dock-yard portion of the town an unenviable repu- 
tation. As my fellow - passenger and myself, shouldering our 
traps, started upon the search for a decent inn in which to pass 
the night, we were followed and watched by several of the men 
who had jostled us on the quay. When we entered a decent 
public-house for the purpose of inquiring whether beds were to 
be had for the night, the men followed us in and sat down in the 
bar. Small things tend to make folks who have travelled in un- 
civilized countries suspicious. My fellow-passenger, who, I be- 
lieve, was in possession of a considerable sum of money, hinted 
to me that he would be glad of my company. We agreed to 
pass the night in the same room. It was a poor place enough, 
with two rude wooden bedsteads in it, a chair or two, and a 
rickety wash-stand, but it was clean enough. We sent down for 
such refreshment as was to be had in the house, being unwilling 
to go down into the bar-parlor, double-locked the door, rendered 
the window-sash, by a simple contrivance, perfectly proof agaihst 
any attempt to open it from the outside, and went to bed. 

“ I have omitted to mention my fellow-passenger’s name, for 
the simple reason that I did not know it. He was a finely-built 
man, well-bred, and gentlemanly enough in manner, somewhere 
about my own age, but looking younger, on account of his light- 
er complexion and his curly red-brown hair. He looked a man 
whose very strength and agility should have rendered him fear- 
less; but, to my surprise, he was, on the subject of thieves and 


THE STORY CONTINUED. 


51 


thieving, as nervous as an old lady or a timid young girl. He 
examined the fastenings of the door and window half a dozen 
times before he would go to bed. I believe, for all he had asked 
for my company, that' he was terribly suspicious even of me. 
But, perhaps, I may be wrong. 

“ I lay awake long after my fellow-passenger, with all his un- 
easiness and distrust of his surroundings, had fallen asleep. That 
uncomfortable sensation, which the most accustomed travellers 
by sea are possessed with on setting foot on dry land after a 
voyage, possessed me. The room heaved up and down, and 
rolled, more than the steamer had seemed to do, in my imagina- 
tion. But at last sleep came on me — a sleep so far different 
from my usual healthy sleep that it was like sleeping and waking 
combined. In a word, I dreamed. Yet while the dream was in 
progress I was so far conscious that I distrusted the reality of 
the vision, and was fully aware of all its fantastic incongruities. 

“ I dreamed first that I stood in a green church-yai’d looking 
at a grave. On the head-stone was carved the name of ‘ Agnes.’ 
Even before I stooped to read the name, I knew that my broth- 
er’s wife — the woman I, too, had loved in my boyish days — was 
dead and buried there. 

“I looked up. On the other side of the grave my brother 
stood. He held a woman by the hand. She was dressed in 
black from head to foot, and wore a widow’s veil under a bridal 
wreath that was upon her head. I tried to speak and reproach 
him with his want of constancy to the dead — and in the same 
moment they vanished, and I was left alone, standing by the 
lonely grave. 

“ I raised my head and looked out over a well-remembered 
country. The old Hall, with its still woods about it, its gardens 
basking in the sunlight, lay before me. I passed in review each 
point of the familiar scene. And as I gazed, the figure of the 
woman in widow’s-weeds passed before me from left to right of 
the fair landscape. And where her footsteps fell darkness fell, 
and blotted the whole picture out. 

“Then the scene changed. I was in Russia again, riding my 
horse over one of the great lonely grazing plains near Novo- 
gorod. The sun set as the encampment I sought rose up before 
me ; and I uttered a wild cry, and the wild people came running 
out of their tents and gave me wild welcome, and I dismounted. 


52 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


and they led me in ; and we feasted and sat in conclave. And 
I thought that I told the story of my dream to the wild people, 
who crowded round to listen. And when I had ended, they 
beat their breasts, and tore their hair, and lamented in their wild 
way. And I said to the chief of the tribe, the old Ziganskie At- 
taman, ‘ Why do they lament ?’ And he answered, ‘ Brother, be- 
cause the dream is a bad dream. Because the black-veiled bride 
who took the hand of my brother’s brother was Sorrow, and the 
shadow that fell upon the house of my brother’s people and swal- 
lowed it up was the shadow of shame and disaster and death !’ 
And I shuddered and cried out, and woke, as I thought, but 
bathed in a cold sweat, and powerless to speak or to move a 
limb. 

“ I knew that I was lying in bed, but I thought the bed stood 
in my old room at home. In the midst of a confusion of 
strange sounds that broke out about me I distinguished the 
sound of hasty feet running by underneath the window; the 
sound of voices calling aloud ; all the feet hurrying in one direc- 
tion, and all the voices calling the same dreadful word over and 
over and over again. And this time I woke in earnest and 
sprang from my bed. 

“ The gray light of dawning filled the room. The pattering 
feet were still going past, underneath the window, to the accom- 
paniment of the barking of a dog and a cracking of whips. I 
looked out, with the dread and terror of my dream on me, and 
saw a flock of sheep being driven by, on their way to the quay. 
I turned back to the room. My fellow-passenger lay sleeping 
peacefully on the rude wooden bedstead farthest from the door 
and nearest to the window. He lay upon his back, with one 
arm thrown out and drooping, and the other pillowing his head. 
I had seen men lying so on foreign battle-flelds, shot through the 
heart. As I looked at him lying there in the faint light a 
strange fancy seized me that he was dead. 

“ So resistless was the feeling that it drove me to his side. I 
bent over him, listening for his breathing. I had to put my ear 
close to his lips, the beating of my own heart so deafened me. 
It was as might have been expected — the man was only asleep. 
He had tumbled into bed half dressed. His flannel shirt was 
open and thrown back, showing his muscular breast. A locket 
he wore round his neck, on a narrow leather string, attracted my 


THE STORY CONTINUED. 


53 


attention. It was an old-fashioned ornament of plain gold. I 
am not fond of spying, and I was disgusted with myself for hav- 
ing — half inadvertently, even to the inappreciable extent of look- 
ing at the locket — pried into my fellow-passenger’s private con- 
cerns. If he had waked and seen me bending over him in the 
murky light of the dawn, he would have had good reason to sus- 
pect me, I thought, as I went back to bed. 

“ Strange enough to say, I fell asleep again the moment my 
head touched the pillow. Stranger still, I dreamed the whole 
dream over again, from the beginning to the end, just in the 
same way. Only my fellow-passenger now went and came in 
the course of the vision ; stood with the veiled woman beside the 
grave instead of my brother, and looked at me, speaking witl^ 
his own voice, out of the eyes of the old Ziganskie Attaman. 
And when the last part of the dream was to dream over again, 
his voice, I ^bought, was the loudest of all the voices that went 
by under the windows, calling, ‘ Murder ! Murder ! Murder !’ 

“ When I woke for the second time the morning was far 
advanced. My fellow-passenger had gone. I breakfasted, paid 
my reckoning, and started on my way. 

“ A few days later, and I was standing on the very spot where 
I had turned back, twenty years ago, to take my last look of the 
old home. A trivial accident led me into conversation with a 
stranger. I recognized his name when, by-and-by, he handed me 
his card. I remembered to have seen him, a sturdy urchin of 
ten, riding his little pony by the side of the stern old Squire’s 
gray road-hack, in the old times that have gone forever. He is 
a cripple now, feeble and deformed, instead of an active lad ; I 
a white-haired man, fast growing old. But he remembered me, 
and called me by my name when I turned to go. Nothing else 
would have stopped me but the sound of that familiar name. 
For at the news that my dream had in some sort been a prophetic 
one, that my brother’s sweet wife was dead, and he the husband 
of another woman, the old strange terrors came thronging back 
on me, cold in the warm sunshine. 

“ Hoell Brinnilow persuaded me to turn back. I did at length, 
and accompanied him to the house. As a rise in the avenue 
brought it for the first time into full view, the figure of a woman 
became visible, coming from the plantation at the south-easterly 
side of the lawn straight towards us. She was plainly dressed. 


54 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


she wore a straw hat, and carried a white sunshade. As her 
shadow fell upon the lawn, something — a chill — I don’t know 
what — came over me. My heart for an instant stopped beating. 
The sickening doubts, the vague presentiments of evil that had 
hung about me since that night at the inn at Hull, came back 
again, whirling between me and my better senses like a cloud of 
Egyptian bats. I don’t know what I said — I don’t know what 
I did — I only know now that I shocked and wounded my com- 
panion. But he recovered himself in a moment, and stopped 
the half-uttered apology upon my lips with words of his own, full 
of considerate kindness for the man who had been guilty of so 
gross a breach of consideration for him. 

“ He led me forward and presented me to Mrs. Kavanagh.” 


CHAPTER VHI. 

EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ So strange were the sensations of the moment that I hardly 
can recall what passed between us. But this I know, that 
she was kindness itself. It was her mellow voice that roused 
me ; the warm clasp of her firm white hand that reassured me ; 
the cordial look of her clear, candid hazel eyes that brought me 
to myself again. It was she who led me in, the woman whom I 
had wronged before I had ever seen her, by base suspicions and 
unfounded prejudices. When I think of it I feel like a mur- 
derer. That word has an ugly sound and a sinister look. The 
same word that the voices of my dream — Blot it out ! 

“ I have blotted it out. 

“The last ugly sensation faded away with the first sight of my 
brother’s face — the first cordial grasp of my brother’s hands. 
We put our arms on each other’s shoulders and hugged, and were 
not ashamed of it. Kind old James! Tough and true-hearted, 
sound to the core, as one of our Norfolk beeches. 

“ I have a niece, and her name is Rosalind. I had no idea 
what an agreeable thing it was to have a niece until a beautiful 
girl came and kissed me — a sounding, honest kiss (I felt that 
kiss, though my hide is as tough as saddle leather), and called 


EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


55 


me ‘ Uncle George.’ It would be almost worth while to settle 
down on the old soil for good, just to be called ‘ Uncle George ’ 
in a tone like that every day. 

“ My niece Rosalind is like her dead mother. She has her 
mother’s sweet, bird-like voice and fair complexion, and her 
mother’s walk, and her mother’s exquisite hands and feet. But, 
strangely enough, there is sufficient likeness between Rosalind 
and her step-mother to take in people who are ignorant of the 
real nature of the relationship between them. It is a good, 
sweet, wholesome, tender thing to see those two together. I 
feel inclined to send out into the highways and hedges of litera- 
ture and gather in, by beat of drum and thrash of cudgel, all the 
namby-pamby folks who write cruel step-mother stories for the 
magazines to benefit by the spectacle. Here’s an unnatural step- 
mother, madam ! Here’s an ill-treated step-daughter, sir ! And 
now be off with the pack of you and write bosh — diluted with 
twaddle — if you can ! 

“ I have made a discovery with relation to my pretty niece 
Rosalind. Rosalind’s stockings — Rosalind’s Uncle George may 
mention his niece’s stockings without shocking the bosh-twad- 
dlers — Rosalind’s stockings are — not exactly of a pronounced blue 
color — say, tinged with a delicate shade of azure and you’ll hit the 
mark. Rosalind has received a superior education. Rosalind 
possesses a cultivated mind, and rubs it carefully up every morn- 
ing with a pinch of science and a rag of some ology or other 
to keep it bright. 

“My niece Rosalind tells me that the intellect of woman has 
made great advances in the last twenty years (she can only speak 
with certainty for nineteen of them — I forgot to remind her of 
that) ; and her claim to equality with man has in all respects 
been wholly justified. All this since I went away. When I 
went away the ladies — bless their hearts ! — were playing at cro- 
quet, reading Tennyson and Bulwer-Lytton, and cultivating sen- 
timentality, just as, twenty years before that time, they had been 
playing the harp, painting on rice-paper, reading the novels of 
Miss Porter or Jane Austen, and cultivating sensibility. return 
to find the aspect of things completely altered. The game of 
lawn-tennis, a pastime involving the violent exercise of every 
muscle in the body, and taxing to the uttermost the staying ca- 
pacities of the respiratory organs, has become the universal pas- 


56 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


sion, while cricket day by day obtains an increasing number of 
female devotees. The novels they read are written ostensibly 
with a purpose, or as ostensibly without one. It is not difficult 
to produce a specimen of this former kind of literature, so pop- 
ular at the present moment, from the simple formula which I 
have appended here for my own private use and information. 
You simply invent or borrow a story of modern life, stir in a lit- 
tle love lawful, and pepper with the illicit article. Then borrow 
one of the newest treatises upon political economy — anybody 
who has got one will give it you for the asking — mix together 
in a bag, shake well, and leave the rest to the printers and the 
public. 

“ Instead of sensibility or sentimentality, the ladies of my na- 
tive country now cultivate patriotism. The female population of 
Great Britain is, at this moment of writing, divided into two po- 
litical parties. Each is headed by its leader; each is distin- 
guished by its favorite color, and hugs to its heart of hearts its 
own particular emblem. 

“The enthusiasm of party number one. has had the effect of 
turning that hardy annual known as the daffodil into a perennial, 
and causing it to flourish, in high Tory gardens, all the year 
round. The party whose chosen emblem it is bears its name. 
The enthusiasts, male and female, who carry its bilious blossoms 
in their bosoms, and wave its presentment on their banners, are 
distinguished by the titles of Daffodil Ladies and Daffodil Lords. 
And, with one or two craven exceptions, not a soul in the county 
but has been formally enrolled as a Daffodil Demonstrator, unless 
he or she happens to be a member of the Liberal Fibberation 
League. 

“ The Liberal Fibberation League exists as a rival association, 
carrying rival banners, wearing rival colors, holding rival opin- 
ions, and pinning rival badges on the breasts of rival members 
at rival meetings in the same town-hall. If a great Daffodil 
demonstration has been held at some Conservative member’s 
country-seat, with bands and buns, raspberry-jam and races, cake 
and quadrilles, whey and waltzes, political addresses and Punch 
and Judy, the Liberal Fibberation League, a few days afterwards, 
issues manifestoes announcing an entertainment to the middle- 
class young of both sexes, presenting exactly the same features, 
down to the Punch and Judy and the political addresses, but 


EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 57 

with radical differences, of course, as regards the politics of the 
•latter. 

“ Each society disseminates its own views and propagates its 
own opinions, in pamphlet form, for the enlightenment of the 
world at large. Lady Butterworth, the most deeply dyed of all 
the Daffodil Ladies of the county, called upon us the other day, 
and selected my unworthy self, being a new'-comer, as the spe- 
cial object of her attentions. On her going away, I found the 
interleaved specimen, bound in yellow, and explaining ‘ How to 
Be a Tory on Twenty Pounds a Year,’ in my left coat-tail 
pocket. 

“ When she went away, Mrs. Dabb-Hendley, the local leader 
of the Liberal Fibberation League, succeeded her. She took me 
aside and was good enough to explain her views. She had not 
been gone five minutes before I found the second specimen in- 
terleaved, bound in emerald-green paper, and entitled ‘ Hints on 
Home Rule; or, the Girls’ Own Guide to Gladstone,’ this time in 
my right-hand coat-tail pocket ! When Lady Butterworth drops 
a sulphur-colored pamphlet on the track of a green one, she calls 
it ‘ stemming the torrent.’ When Mrs. Dabb-Hendley sheds a 
green one to counteract the bilious-hued influences already men- 
tioned, she calls it ‘ scotching the snake.’ Imagine the snake 
being scotched and the torrent being stemmed, with more or less 
vigor and discretion, by the yellow or green friends and follow- 
ers of these two patriotic and extraordinary women, right and 
left, and you will have conceived a slight but adequate idea of 
the effect which politics — indulged in with as little discretion as 
orange Pekoe — may have upon the entire feminine population of 
a county. 

“ My sister-in-law, who appears to be a sensible as well as a 
handsome woman, does not appear to have suffered from inocu- 
lation of any of these differently colored principles ; and my niece 
Rosalind only whispered to me this morning that she doesn’t 
know the difference between a Tory and a Radical, and doesn’t 
care to know it ! I very much doubt if the author of either the 
yellow pamphlet or the green could enlighten her ! ^ 

“ My niece Rosalind is a charming girl ; and, like many other 
gharming girls, she is perfectly aware of the fact. 

“ My niece Rosalind is in love, and she hasn’t the least idea 
of it.” 


58 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ In love with ‘ Philip !’ 

“ ‘ Philip ’ is a baronet ; not a very rich one ; but the Lidyard 
estates were encumbered in his uncle’s time, and, like a prudent 
young man, he has been content to invest the accumulated interest 
of his long minority — he was turned twenty-five before he legally 
came of age — in putting things to rights again. I remember 
Sir Philip Lidyard’s mother. She used to be a handsome, yellow- 
haired, strapping giantess, with a loud laugh and a hearty appe- 
tite and an obstinate temper. Her son is like her in every re- 
spect but that of the appetite. Did I mention that he was in 
love with Rosalind? Young men who are in love don’t think 
much of eating in presence of the object of their affections be- 
cause they are aware that after marriage they may rate her about 
soup, fish, entree, or joint, at dinner seven times a week with im- 
punity — perhaps ! Never mind ! I’m only a bachelor — my view 
of matrimony is a prejudiced view, no doubt. 

I met Sir Philip on the day of my arrival. He was sitting 
talking in an undertone to my niece Rosalind — why will young 
people have so many secrets ? — on the terrace, the dear old red- 
fiagged terrace that runs along the back of the house, whefe the 
musk-roses and jasmine twine round the cracked stone pillars, 
and our mother used to walk on rainy days, looking out on the 
drowned garden. Even in the time of snow she used to walk 
there. One night in Persia, when I was lying stricken with fever 
at a road-side khan, I dreamed I saw her, passing slowly up and 
down from the boudoir-windows to those of the drawing-room, 
from dining-room to library, and back again — all these rooms 
being on Jhe ground-fioor, in a line with each other, and having 
as nearly as possible the same outlook — as though the foe might 
be expected to sally from ambush in the woods and lay siege t© 
the front door any day, and it was as well to be on the safe side. 

“ Philip has known Rosalind ever since she was six years old. 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


59 


Rosalind has known Philip ever since he was eighteen and came 
home from Heidelberg — where he" had been studying harmony, 
letting his hair grow, and learning to drink Bavarian beei — to 
take his proper position as the heir-expectant of a homoeopathic 
bachelor uncle, who physicked himself out of the big globule we 
live in by the incessant exhibition of little ones — sugar-coated — 
within a year afterwards. 

“ So far, the path of these pretty young lovers would seem to 
be strewn with roses. But young people, especially high-spirited 
young people, don’t want things to be made too easy for them at 
first. They like alarms and excursions, feints and surprises; and 
to part forever, on an average, at least three times a week. They 
know that the course of true love never did run smooth, and they 
would be very much disappointed, on the whole, if it were to. 

“ ‘ Let go my hand, for Heaven’s sake ! Papa is looking !’ or, 
‘You must positively go now, and not come near me for another 
two days at least. Mamma is beginning to suspect something,’ 
etc., etc., when papa and mamma are perfectly aware of the 
little matter, rather pleased at it than otherwise, and quite ready 
to strike the conventional attitudes and discharge themselves of 
the conventional blessing at a moment’s notice. 

“ I, too, had my May-time ; it was a short one. Storms swept 
over the smiling fields and robbed the orchards of their bridal 
garlands ; the hawthorn blossoms wept from the hedge in pearly 
showers ; the birds forgot that it was pairing-time and hushed 
their notes ; or it seemed so to me. Despair breathed on the 
windows of my solitary chamber and frosted them with her 
breath, so that I only saw a wintry landscape, where to others 
Spring reigned and rioted over the goodly earth. 

“ Ah ! the old associations, the old memories, the old scenes, 
as they spring up and twine round me closer day by day ; no 
wonder if the wild, roving instincts, the sturdy love of freedom 
and change are being choked out in their embrace. Of old, I 
felt my individuality perishing in this environment of use and 
custom and familiar habit — I felt smothered under it as a young 
tree must feel when the close-clinging mantle of the wood-ivy 
wraps it round, and the honeysuckle and the wild hops have 
clasped their fetters upon its branches. But, after all, the vaga- 
bond in me is not dead but sleeping, and some fine day he will 
wake and shake himself, strap the old brown-leather knapsack 


60 


jDRAGON’S TEETH. 


on his back, and take his staff from its dusty corner, and start 
upon the tramp again. But when I speak of this day, they — 
all of them, down to Philip, of whom I am jealous — raise an out- 
cry. My niece Rosalind and her mother have forbidden me to 
mention the subject again under threat of penalties unspecified, 
but understood in a vague way to be grim and dire. These two 
gentlewomen are autocrats, and use their power mercilessly. 
My brother James, who had the reputation in military circles 
of being a martinet, is, I should say, the best bullied man in 
Europe at this moment. Nominally, he is master in his own 
house, but in reality his rule does not extend one inch beyond 
the walls of the carpetless dressing-room, where his little iron 
camp-bedstead stands, and his big bath yawns for him, and his 
old fatigue-caps and swords hang upon the walls, round which 
his twenty-four pairs of boots are mustered in orderly rank and 
file. The best bullied man in Europe, did I say ? Perhaps the 
happiest and best contented, after all. But if no earthly per- 
suasion may induce the kind people of this dear old house to 
hear of any limit being set to my stay, I myself have drawn the 
Rubicon beyond which not one hour’s delay is allowable. And 
that limit will be found at the bottom of the last blank page in 
this book — and the book is not a large one. The last line writ- 
ten, the last ‘ i ’ dotted, the last ‘ t ’ crossed, back goes Vaga- 
bond George to the old wild life, the old wild companions, with 
a volume of gentle thoughts and kind remembrances to keep 
him company ! 

“ But I have strayed away from Rosalind to generalize. 

“ I have said that Rosalind is in love. How did I come to 
guess first at the truth? Upon a certain day, when it was pro- 
posed that, under Rosalind’s guidance, I should go over the old 
house and renew my acquaintance with it, corridor by corridor, 
chamber by chamber. 

“ The main body of the house had been explored ; the east 
wing, in which are the kitchen oflSces, and the servants’ rooms, 
presented nothing of interest. The west wing remained. It is 
now little used, being the coldest and most draughty, as well as 
the oldest portion of the house. A dismantled ball-room or 
reception-chamber occupies nearly the whole of the second floor. 
Decorated in fresco by some dead and gone artist, in the de- 
praved classical taste of the Jacobean Period, it may once, when 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


61 


its colors were bright and its gilding untarnished, have presented 
a cheerful spectacle. But now, with its moulting Cupids, faded 
and time-discolored garlands, and flagrant mythological inde- 
cencies, from whose riotous limbs the plaster has dropped away 
in scales — imparting to them a leprous appearance loathly in the 
extreme, it is the last place on earth in which a merrymaking of 
any sort might be held — except, indeed, a dance of ghouls. 

“ But beyond the ball-room, raised above the level of its dusty 
floor by a short flight of three oaken steps, is the old music- 
room, lighted from the north by a noble window of stained 
glass. Here all sorts of antique and forgotten instruments are 
falling, one by one, into a soundless decay. There are the vir- 
ginals upon which Queen Elizabeth is said to have played a tune 
with the royal Angers that were apt to play other tunes, in 
stormy seasons, about the ears of royal favorites. There are 
clavichords and viols, with necks of monstrous length and un- 
wieldy bows, queerly inlaid and ornamented with mother-of-pearl 
and foreign woods. Beside an old spinet — the dusty grave of 
many a forgotten melody — stands my mother’s harp, swathed in its 
green-baize bag, which the moths have eaten into holes ; the flute 
I used to get such desolate wailings out of when I was a lad, 
lies yet upon the dusty window-sill, and the old school-room 
piano upon which I used to practise my scales — much to James’ 
disgust — has been banished up here, and is now ending its days 
peaceably in a sunny corner. But a grizzly erection, bristling 
with pipes and pedals and handles — gilt knobs such as you see 
upon the drawers in- chemists’ shops — now encroached its un- 
gainly bulk upon the wide fireplace, and lumbered — not soared 
— towards the ceiling ; I had never seen this before, and said so. 
It is, in fact, an organ, invented and perpetrated by Philip dur- 
ing a brief mechanical craze, which overtook him in the early 
part of his career, before — his elder brother being then living — 
he was permitted to indulge his musical propensities by going 
to Heidelberg to study, and was consequently presented by him 
to Rosalind. 

“ Metal does not enter into the composition of this instrument. 
It is made entirely of turned wood and leather. Of all the 
quaint instruments in that room — and there are many — that 
organ is the most obsolete and absurd. Indeed, it partakes more 
of the character of an edifice than an instrument, so much solid 


62 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


material has gone into the making of it. It is dark, ponderous, 
frowning. It might be a novel kind of rack used at some period 
of the Middle Ages. It is capable of a surprising amount of 
torture to-day, though it is in a crazy condition from dry-rot, 
and partially paralyzed from long disuse. 

‘“It is Philip’s organ,’ said Rosalind, and sat down on the un- 
comfortable little bench and laid her white hands upon the yel- 
low keys, as if they had been old friends. Philip, who had 
drifted into the room in my niece’s wake, instantly sat down and 
prepared to listen to the strains that should be evoked by his 
mistress from the instrument created by his hands, while I, like 
a dutiful uncle, blew the bellows. 

“ The strains came. As a rule — I’m not an organist myself 
and I may be wrong — the largest pipes produce the lowest 
sounds, and the thinnest pipes the shrillest. Nothing of the 
kind with Philip’s organ ! It bellowed where it should have 
sighed, it was gruff where it ought to have been tender. The 
treble register roared and thundered like a foundery in full blast, 
the bass notes twittered and chirped like a nest of sparrows. It 
had dropped the middle register out of the key-board, like a 
tooth. Was ever such an unconscionable old organ ? 

“ ‘ My dear,’ I said to my niece Rosalind, when the mediaeval 
captive had breathed his last and all was peace again; ‘ that is a 
very extraordinary instrument !’ 

“ ‘ Philip made it,’ said Rosalind, defiantly, as if it must be 
perfection on that absurd account. She looked at Philip. He 
was sitting on the broad window-seat where I used sit when I 
was a boy. 

“ His elbow leaned upon the sill. He rested his head upon 
his hand and stared absently at the floor, which the morning 
sunshine had diapered with crimson and purple from the stained 
quarrels overhead. Perhaps he was pondering on the theory of 
the eternity of sound, and wondering if such tones as he had 
made that instrument liable to produce were likely to go on 
through space for uncounted cycles to come 1 Or perhaps he 
was thinking about Rosalind ! 

“ I saw her eyes settle and rest on him, sitting unconscious 
there, as the eyes of a loving woman look upon the man of her 
heart. I saw a lovely flush rise in her cheeks and dye her sweet 
white throat into crimson, like the color on the side of a sun- 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


63 


bitten peach. I saw her bosom rise and fall to the time of her 
quickened breathing as his eyes lifted and met her own and 
told their secret tenderly to her. 

“ What did I do ? 

“ I did a thing which should bring upon me the condemnation 
of every well-regulated person : I remembered that I had been 
young once — I went away and left them together.” 


CHAPTER X. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ I FOUND Mrs. Kavanagh in the garden. Hoell Brinnilow 
was with her. She was cutting roses, the hardy yellow roses 
that blow late and linger on till the November frosts. Hoell 
held her basket ; on his face was the pleased, bright, almost 
boyish expression that softens the lines of pain and discon- 
tent, and alters it so agreeably when he is in her company or 
within sight of her and sound of her voice. 

“ He leads a retired life up at his old ‘ ghost-hutch,’ as he 
humorously terms the Manor-house. But for his extraordinary 
taste for, and indulgence in dress, one might say, a hermit-like 
life. At first sight I was hardly disposed to like Hoell Brinni- 
low, but I confess he has gained upon me since. I fancy that I 
can discern in that strange mixture of contradictions, elements 
of tenderness, nobility, and self-devotion. Even what I was 
l^rshly disposed to condemn as flippant trifling with the gravity 
of his own affliction now presents itself to me in another light — 
the light of a courageous determination to make the best of life 
as a bad job ; to yield to no temptation to relapse into sour mo- 
roseness or sullen despair, but to keep, as far as possible, a sturdy 
heart in a frail, stricken body, to the end. 

“I see him in this altered aspect now ; thanks to Mrs. Kav- 
anagh, who first opened my eyes, who first showed me the true 
nature of the man. 

“ ‘ Where is Rosalind ?’ she asked, as I joined them. (Rosalind 
always before everything, with this anomalous step-mother.) 


64 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ ‘ In the music-room,’ I answered, dexterously avoiding any 
reference to Sir Philip in my reply. 

“ My sister-in-law looked at me. I returned the look with as 
much unconsciousness as I could muster. 

“ ‘ Alone V she questioned. 

“ I believed not ; I believed that Sir Philip Lidyard — 

“ Mrs. Kavanagh’s serene brow became a little ruffled. 

“ ‘ It is damp up there,’ she said, anxiously ; ‘ damp and cold, 
even in this warm weather.’ 

“ She moved from us towards the house. 

“ ‘ Let me go !’ insisted Hoell Brinnilow, divining her unex- 
pressed intention in a minute. ‘Let me go and bring Rosalind 
down out of the damp and the cold.’ 

“‘No, no!’ I said, shocked at the idea of letting him under- 
take an errand which might involve exertion or even pain. ‘ Let 
me go.’ 

“ Hoell turned upon me quite angrily. 

“ ‘ Are you the tame cat of this establishment,’ he demanded, 

‘ or am I ?’ 

“ ‘ Hoell, Hoell,’ remonstrated Mrs. Kavanagh, touching him 
lightly on the arm. 

“ Hoell became good-tempered on the instant. 

“ ‘ It’s a characteristic of the true-born Briton to resent inter- 
ference with his privileges,’ he said, ‘ whether his privileges con- 
sist in catching the small-pox, getting drunk on Sunday, taking 
a muddy foot-path through somebody’s private grounds instead 
of the high-road, or in wearing yellow or green, as the case may 
be. I’m a true-born Briton in that I stick to my privileges like 
grim death or glue ; and in this house I’m the privileged person 
who fetches and carries, comes and goes, does this, that, and 
t’other for the ladies. I wind their crewels ; they’ve taught me 
to embroider nearly as well as they do themselves. I bud their 
roses and doctor their over-fed lap-dogs and plethoric cats. I 
teach their parrots to talk without swearing, and their bullfinches 
to whistle tunes.^ I’m not, like you, an honored guest in this 
house. I’m an institution — a crazy one, like most of the other 
institutions in the country. And I’m going to fetch Rosalind 
down out of the damp.’ 

“ He limped away as gallantly as if he had had the best legs 
in England. In resentment of my implied slight upon his pow- 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


65 


ers, he even swung himself over the low balustrade that runs 
round the terrace, instead of walking up the path to the glass 
door. As he gained the threshold he turned and waved his hat 
triumphantly to Mrs. Kavanagh, defiantly to me. He vanished 
then. Thump, thump ! We could hear his crutches pounding 
up the hall. Then a pause. He was resting, once out of sight; 
stopping to gain breath before attempting to scale the staircase 
that led to the western wing. 

“ Mrs. Kavanagh turned to me, smiling, but with tears rising in 
her eyes. 

“ ‘ He is so sensitive on the subject of his infirmity that he can- 
not bear to be reminded, even in kindness, that the things other 
people do so easily are trouble and even pain to him,’ she said. 
‘ Nothing pleases him so much as being appealed to for advice, 
asked for help in little matters, as if his body were as strong as 
his heart is kind and honest. Poor fellow !’ 

“ ‘ He has much to bear,’ I answered. 

“‘And he bears it bravely,’ she returned, ‘uncomplainingly, 
nobly, patiently. He might so easily have become bitter and 
morose; he might so easily have yielded to despair. But you 
will see by-and-by, if you have not seen already, all his satire 
is upon the surface, all his faults are uppermost ; the true, gen- 
erous nature, the real, sterling qualities lie deeper down. Ask 
the poor laboring people in the village what they think of their 
lame Squire ? They will tell you that he is their best friend, in 
spite of his sharp tongue and his odd ways ; ask your brother 
James what he thinks of his old companion ; ask Rosalind how 
much regard she has for her old playfellow, and hear what both 
of them will say ; and then come and ask me what I think of 
Hoell Brinnilow.’ 

“ ‘You are his best champion,’ I said. 

“ ‘ I know his story,’ she returned. ‘ I know how much he 
has suffered and how much he suffers still.’ She stopped and 
sighed, ‘ Poor Hoell !’ 

“ ‘ I remember him,’ I told her. ‘ Nearly twenty years ago I 
used to see him riding his little pony about the roads and lanes 
alone, or beside the old Squire on his bony gray. A sturdy, 
healthy-looking little fellow he was in those days, as far as looks 
went. No sign of inherited weakness or latent disease about 
him then^ 

6 


66 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ ‘ Hoell Brinnilow’s infirmity arises from no inherited dis- 
ease,’ returned Mrs. Kavanagh. ‘ He was, at ten years old, the 
healthy, sturdy child that you describe, if a neglected one. His 
mother died in giving him birth. I wish, for his sake, she had 
lived.’ 

“ ‘ The deformity, then, is the result of an accident ?’ I inter- 
rogated. 

“ ‘ The result of a terrible accident,’ returned Mrs. Kavanagh, 
‘ which happened some few years later, when Hoell was a boy of 
fourteen, and a pupil at one of the great English public schools 
— the school at which Sir Philip Lidyard was educated. It was 
from Philip that I first heard the story. Hoell shrinks from 
speaking of it, as it is easy to imagine that so sensitive a nature 
would. It is a sad story.” 

“ ‘ If no breach of confidence is entailed in telling the story,’ I 
said, ‘ I should like to hear it.’ 

“ In a few words she told me the story : 

“‘The great public school of Burnham Green has sent out 
many celebrated men into the world,’ she said. ‘Some of our 
greatest scholars were educated there. Several of our greatest 
statesmen look back with pride and pleasure to the days when 
they were boys at Burnham Green. 

“ ‘ Every old established foundation of the sort has its tradi- 
tional customs,’ she went on ; ‘ some bad, some good. You were 
once a boy at school. Perhaps you have had some experience of 
the custom or the practice — whichever term is the most appro- 
priate — of fagging V 

“ I answered her boldly enough : 

“ ‘ I have some experience of that custom, gained during a sin- 
gle term spent at a public school, and it is a custom base and 
debasing — degrading to those who exercise it and to those upon 
whom it is exercised. That is all I have to say upon the subject 
of fagging.’ 

“ ‘ Hoell, in common with all the other boys of his lower form, 
was fag to a bigger boy,’, she went on. ‘ He was a delicate lad, 
though a healthy one. He had been brought up not over ten- 
derly, perhaps, but as a gentleman’s son usually is brought up at 
home. Here at school he had to cook and sweep, run errands 
and black boots. He had to submit to ill-usage, insult, positive 
torture from the bigger and stronger boys, who were — according 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


67 


to the unwritten laws of the public school — his brutal masters ; 
from one in particular, a strong muscular boy — a splendid fel- 
low, and capable of wonders — according to Philip, whose hero 
he was, and who to this day maintains his friendship for him. 
Philip and Hoell both fagged for the same master ; and while 
Philip was treated with comparative consideration and compara- 
tive kindness, Hoell was the victim of every petty insult, every 
brutal outrage, that the brain of his tyrant could devise, or the 
superior strength of his tyrant could execute.’ 

“She stopped. 

“ ‘ I know — I know,’ I said, for her indignation had infected 
and memories of by-gone blows and indignities were begin- 
ning to rankle as bitterly as they did thirty years ago. ‘Pray 
go on.’ 

“ ‘ There is not much more to say,’ Mrs. Kavanagh continued. 
‘But the accident — if one can call it an accident that made Hoell 
a cripple for life — happened in the gymnasium. It was a wet 
day. Some of the sixth-form boys were gathered there, amus- 
ing themselves by emulating each other’s feats of skill or bet- 
ting on them. Smaller boys gathered round admiring the clev- 
erness of their superiors and masters, and wishing for the time 
when they, too, might be able to smoke and drink, and bet and 
swear, and risk breaking their necks with impunity — like them. 
Philip was there. Hoell was there. The latter was seen, and 
sent to fetch something in a bottle — prohibited liquor, I suppose 
— for his tyrant. He slipped, broke the bottle, and spilled the 
drink on his hurried way back ; and for punishment he was 
ordered to climb the high trapeze to essay the same difficult 
athletic feat, in the execution of which his master most excelled, 
and which his master had triumphantly performed, amid the 
applause of the other boys, a few minutes before.” 

“ ‘ He did not dare to refuse, of course,’ I said. ‘And he tried 
to do it and fell. I see. An ugly tumble on the mattress, at the 
best.’ 

“‘He tried to do ft, lost nerve, grew giddy, and fell, as you have 
guessed,’ she responded. ‘But there was no mattress underneath 
to break his fall. As he lost hold — before his eyes closed and he 
swung off — he saw and heard his tormentor, with an oath, kick 
the mattress away. The next thing he remembered was waking 
up in bed at the school hospital He lay there, I ''!on’t know for 


68 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


how long, between life and death. Then the doctors came and 
broke the news to him : that he might, with care and in time, 
be able to rise from that bed ; but that he must be a cripple all 
his life, until the time came for lying down in the last resting- 
place of Ull.’ 

“ ‘ And the boy who did it V 

“ ‘ The case was too flagrant to be ignored by the authorities,’ 
she returned; ‘he was expelled from the school. Then Hoell 
came home — came back, I should say — to a den of riot, disorder, 
and worse. The old Squire’s grief revenged itself on the inno- 
cent cause of it. There was only one honest hand to help the 
helpless boy, there was only one honest heart — honest in its re- 
gard and tenderness to him— to turn to in the place : a rough 
woman, a semi-wild creature, a cast-off plaything of the squire’s ; 
she devoted herself to Hoell. The Squire is dead ; his excesses 
have made ruinous inroads upon his property — inroads which 
have impoverished the son. But as long as Hoell has a roof 
over his head, that faithful creature will share it. Ah ! if I have 
made you do Hoell the justice you denied him in your heart of 
hearts half an hour ago, my story has not been told for nothing.’ 

“ I took her hand and put it to my lips as she stood there in 
her calm, matronly beauty, with the sunlight resting on her white 
brow, and in her clear, earnest eyes, and touching the folds of 
her softly-falling draperies, pleading Hoell’s cause. I felt, at the 
moment, as if I would willingly have changed places with him, 
only to know myself the object of a regard so sisterly, pure, and 
tender. 

“ ‘ Remember, now, when you are inclined to judge Hoell harsh- 
ly, his blighted life, his withered hopes, the desolate house that 
might have been a happy home and is such a lonely one,’ she 
said. ‘ Think what he is, compared with what he might have 
been. Compare the old trite saying, so common on the lips of 
those who have never known what it is to suffer, that suffering 
purifies and chastens our human nature into something higher 
and better than itself ; compare it with your actual experience. 
Did the lightning stroke of grief, when it fell upon your soul 
and branded it, leave you a wiser and better man ? Did the 
tempests of despair that beat upon you, in some desolate God- 
abandoned hour that you have known, leave you fortified and 
strengthened or level with the dust ? Ready, like other hapless 


TfiE JOURNAL— CONTlNtTED. 


69 


victims of circumstances — hard, inexorable, merciless circum- 
stances — to yield to the next desperate temptation that came 
your way, or to resist and overcome it ?’ 

“She stopped abruptly, as*Hoell emerged from the house, 
breathless and exhausted, but zealous and unflagging 'as ever, 
with Rosalind, a flushed and laughing captive, on his arm. 

“ But before they approached within hearing, I uttered a ques- 
tion that had been checked upon my lips at the outset of Mrs. 
Kavanagh’s story. I don’t know why I asked it. 

“ ‘ What was the name of the boy whose brutal act brought 
life-long suffering on his victim and well-merited punishment on 
himself ? What was the name of the boy who was expelled from 
Burnham Green ?’ 

“ She answered, ‘ Reginald Hawley.’ ” 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

September 15th, 

“ Last night was the flrst wakeful night I have spent within 
these familiar walls since my return. I rose at an abnormal 
hour in the morning. I dressed, and lighted the old brier-root 
— my faithful companion for years past in many a wild wander- 
ing, in many a sore strait — and resolved to clear the cobwebs 
out of my brain by a cool morning walk. Nobody was stirring. I 
made my way out noiselessly by way of the dining-room window, 
crossed the terrace and the garden, and emerged into the stable- 
yard through a side door. 

“ Nobody met me except the head-groom, who was returning 
from a party held at the house of a friend in the village. They 
had given him something for supper which had disagreed with 
him, and in consequence he had been obliged to stop out all 
night — that is, he would have tendered that explanation had cir- 
cumstances allowed of his expressing himself, except by ono- 
matopceia. 

“I said, ‘All right, William; I won’t tell your master!’ and 
went on. I passed through a wicket, under a crumbly brick arch. 


70 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


jind found myself in the kitchen-garden. A row of espalier apple- 
trees screened the path and prevented my seeing who the per- 
sons were, but the voices of a man and woman reached me. They 
were quarrelling. The voice of *the man told me nothing but 
that he was probably one of the under-gardeners, and that he 
was rating the woman for having trespassed on his domain. The 
accents of the woman were completely strange to me. I stepped 
round the corner of the leafy screen, and came in sight of the 
belligerents. 

“The under- gardener, a tow-haired, chuckle-headed young 
giant, in a long-sleeved fustian waistcoat and corduroys, knuckled 
his forehead and began to explain his grievance. 

“ Directly he appealed to me, the woman, who had been stand- 
ing with her back to the espaliers, and had not noticed my ap- 
proach, turned and confronted me. Decently dressed in check 
print, with a black-silk apron showing beneath the folds of her 
quiet -colored, old-fashioned merino shawl; with a neat straw- 
bonnet resting on her black hair, slightly streaked with gray, she 
presented the appearance of a respectable upper servant. Noth- 
ing remarkable about the woman so far. 

“ But as she stared at me, insolently enough, recognizing in 
me no claim to her respect or subservience, I recognized some- 
thing in her that almost startled me into an unguarded expression 
of surprise. A cast of countenance, a type of character bearing 
in a subtle and strange degree the stamp of a strange and subtle 
race. 

“ Gypsy blood ran in the woman’s veins, and lent to her skin 
its dusky opaqueness. The semi-Oriental curve of the gypsy 
profile distinguished hers ; hers also the dusky, purplish tint of 
lip and inner nostril ; hers the shallow, glittering, inscrutable gypsy 
stare. As she looked at me, I looked at her, in silent wonder, 
while the under-gardener’s aggrieved references to his trampled 
parsnips and damaged asparagus glided past my unhearing ears 
in a feeble trickle of sound. 

“ The woman waited imperturbably till he had stopped, and 
then addressed herself to him, still returning ray gaze with a broad 
stare of defiance. 

“ ‘ Have you said all you want to say, Joel Thatcher ?’ 

“ ‘ Hardla yit,’ returned the under-gardener ; ‘ hardla yit. Missis 
Weather.’ 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


1l 


“ ‘ Then finish and be quick about it,’ the woman responded, 
folding her shawl about her. ‘ My master will be wanting me 
to dress him ; my master will be calling for his cup of tea in an- 
other twenty minutes. Do you think I am likely to keep my mas- 
ter waiting for you V She had turned her eyes from me for a mo- 
ment ; she now turned them back, and addressed me. ‘ I walked 
over to the dairy this morning, sir, to order some eggs and some 
butter. We don’t keep fowls, or churn at ray master’s place. 
The garden-gate was open. I took the short cut through the 
garden.’ She pointed to the farther wicket-gate, opposing the 
one by which I had entered from the stable-yard. ‘ I have been 
accustomed to use the short cut, sir,’ she went on, ‘ and to come 
and go about the place as I choose, for more years than I should 
like to count. And this young man, who is new to the situation, 
interfered with me, and threatened me to-day. I should advise 
the young man to appeal to his betters before he takes the law 
into his own hands next time.’ 

“‘My orders,’ said the under-gardener, stolidly, ‘is “No Tres- 
passes Allowed.’” He wrote the words upon the air with a 
stubby forefinger, and made an invisible flourish underneath 
them. ‘And new to th’ place or old to th’ place, all I want to 
know is, whatn’ yow got under yow’re shaal V 

“The woman laughed contemptuously and tightened her shawl 
about her. 

“ ‘ Whatn’ yow got under yow’re shaal ?’ pursued the relentless 
under-gardener, as stolidly as before. ‘ Show th’ gantlemun, if 
you woynt show me !’ 

“ ‘Weeds,’ returned the woman, ‘ worthless weeds P 

“ ‘ All raight,’ nodded the gardener, ‘ show us th’ waades.’ 

“ His slow obstinacy seemed to goad the woman’s slumbering 
temper into fury. She whipped a handful of something green 
from under her shawl and shook it in his face. 

“ ‘ Look at them, then !’ she said. ‘ Look at the precious plants 
stolen from your master’s garden ! I wish, for your sake, I had 
left them growing where I found them. I wish — ’ She 
stopped abruptly. * ‘ Are you satisfied now V she demanded. 
‘Are they weeds or are they not?’ 

“‘They be waades!’ acknowledged the defeated gardener, 
scratching his chin. 

“The woman tossed her head with unutterable scorn of his 


72 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


stupidity, and folded her shawl tightly around her again, without 
throwing the weeds away. I had seen such weeds before, and 
in hands as lean and brown and supple as the hands that held 
these. And I knew the uses to which such hands had put them 
from time immemorial — aye, and would put them, in vengeful 
times to come. And on the irresistible impulse of the moment, 
I spoke to the woman I knew to be of gypsy race, in the lan- 
guage of the gypsies, saying : 

“ ‘ Koshto divvus, Rom many Chi ! * What are you going to 
do with that V 

“ The woman started perceptibly. A greenish pallor crept 
over her olive-brown cheeks. Her eyes shot a sudden look at me 
from between their narrowed lids, a look of anger and suspicion 
and hatred, all in one. The next moment she had recovered her 
composure, and faced me as coolly, as insolently as ever, while 
the gardener gaped in astonishment at the unfamiliar sound of a 
language he had, most likely, never heard before. 

“ ‘ What are you going to do with that ?’ I repeated. 

‘“Does the gentleman speak to me?’ she returned. ‘I don’t 
understand what the gentleman says. I’m sometimes taken for 
a foreigner, being dark complexioned. But I’m no foreigner for 
all that. And any language but the English language sounds 
strange and outlandish to me.’ 

“She had roused my obstinacy, with the aggravation of her 
look and the insolence of her manner, as she had roused the gar- 
dener’s. 

“‘The people who speak the language I spoke to you just 
now,’ I said, ‘ gather weeds like those and use them. They use 
them for drabbing bawlor,t and sometimes for drabbing other 
things besides. Do you know what drabbing bawlor means, 
mistress, in the English language ?’ 

“ ‘ No,’ returned the woman. She looked past me at the gap- 
ing gardener. ‘You know my name, Joel Thatcher,’ she said. 

‘ Tell the gentleman my name, and what I am, and where I live. 
He doesn’t believe me when I tell him I’m not a foreigner.’ She 
dropped a quick courtesy, and walked rapidly away towards the 
farther gate. 

‘“It’s Mrs. Weather, Squire Brinnilow’s housekeeper, sir,’ 


* Daughter of Rome, good-day to you 1 


f Poisoning swine. 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


73 


spoke up the gardener, obediently, as Mrs. Weather reached the 
gate and went out of it, closing it behind her, ‘ and she’s a queer 
one.’ 

“ He knuckled his forehead and shouldered his hoe and slouched 
heavily away. I don’t know what prompted me to the action. 
I walked to the gate, and looked after the woman. She had 
crossed the wire-fenced paddock that lies beyond, and, as I looked, 
struck into the plantation by a path that I knew to bend into a 
right-of-way running across the park, and leading out through 
the upper gate upon the village green of Ketton Old Church. 

“ I yielded to another impulse, as inexplicable as the first, and 
followed the woman. She never looked back, but walked on 
steadily. I traversed the plantation and crossed the park, keep- 
ing her in sight all the time. I passed the gates, and came out 
upon the village green, where the village children were playing 
or dawdling about, waiting for the opening of the village school 
— a red-brick building, nestling in the shadow of the old fiint- 
built church, with its massive square tower — the old church, in 
fact, that gives the village its name. On the other side of the 
green, beyond the white strip of high-road, high hedges of close- 
clipped yew enclose the garden of the Manor-house — a gabled 
old building of two stories in height, whose sunken roof-ridges 
and bulging walls are smothered under a glorious tangle of pas- 
sion-vine, variegated ivy, and Virginia - creeper. ‘A house on 
crutches,’ as its master says, propped up on the side that looks 
towards the high-road by great, slanting wooden beams, whose 
naked ugliness is hidden at this season of the year under a gar- 
landing of autumn-tinted leaves and lingering blossoms. 

“ I went in at the gate, under a green arch, and through a 
quaint wilderness of old-fashioned garden, and rang at the front 
door. It was opened by an elderly man-servant in a green-baize 
apron and a long-sleeved livery waistcoat. 

“ ‘ Is your master at home V I asked. 

“The butler stared, and I began to remember, as the church 
clock struck nine, what an inappropriate hour I had chosen for 
a visit to an invalid. 

“ But before I had time to frame an excuse sufficient for the 
covering of my retreat, or the butler to reply to my inquiry, a 
distant door banged noisily open, and the voice of Hoell an- 
swered for Hoell’s self. 


74 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ ‘ Of course he is at home,’ it proclaimed, * and delighted to 
see you, my dear fellow ! Pray walk in ! Jarvis, you ancient 
idiot, why don’t you ask the gentleman to walk in ? You have 
come to breakfast? Don’t tell me you haven’t come to break- 
fast ! Jarvis, show Mr. Kavanagh into the library, and give him 
an arm-chair, or a cigar and a newspaper, or Anything else he 
wants, and tell the cook to send up everything she has in the 
house for breakfast. With you directly, my dear fellow — with 
you directly !’ 

“The distant door banged to. Resistance was useless — as 
the abducting brigand says to the fainting lady in the stock 
drama. I followed the butler through a wide, low hall, with a 
heavily-moulded plaster ceiling and panelled walls, against the 
dark, shining background of which trophies of Oriental arms 
and several fine sets of antlers show to advantage, and entered 
the library. 

“ It runs the whole length of the house, from back to front. 
Modern French windows, opening on the lawn at the rear, have 
been substituted for the old-fashioned casements which still illu- 
mine the upper end. The costly books upon the shelves, the 
pictures on the walls, the marble and metal reproductions of cel- 
ebrated works of sculpture, modern and antique, which stand 
upon the brackets, are nearly all unique — all rare and valuable in 
their way. Hoell’s writing-table is a marvel of expensive con- 
venience; Hoell’s sliding easel a triumph of artistic elegance; 
Hoell’s wheeled, stuffed, and padded chairs invite to luxurious 
repose ; the newest reviews and periodicals testify to Hoell’s lit- 
erary tastes; Hoell’s microscope and miniature photographic 
camera bear witness to his scientific ones. The table was already 
laid for breakfast, with a handsome show of snowy linen and 
massive old silver. Looking about me, I admired the conven- 
iences and comforts of this snug bachelor nest, and was half-way 
towards envying the owner of it, when Hoell came halting in, 
and slapped me boisterously on the back. He wore an outrage- 
ously braided, bright-blue velvet smoking-suit, and an extrava- 
gantly embroidered smoking - cap. He was as jewelled, as 
scented, as pomatumed as ever, and, by contrast with the 
macaw-like brilliancy of his costume, seemed, if possible, more 
wizened and more lean. But he welcomed me a second time 
with great heartiness, and slapped me on the back again as 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


75 


he rang the bell for breakfast, with the airy hospitality of a 
Barmecide. 

“The breakfast appeared, and on the heels of the old man- 
servant, who carried the tray, appeared the woman I had seen 
and spoken to that morning in the garden. She made no sign 
of recognition. She moved with the quick noiselessness born 
of old servitude and long custom into the place before the tray, 
and began to pour out coffee. 

“ * This is my house-keeper, Mrs. Weather,’ Hoell said, limp- 
ing to the table with his usual gait. Mrs. Weather acknowl- 
edged the introduction to her master’s guest by putting down 
the coffee-pot and courtesying stiffly, but respectfully. Seen 
now without the shawl, the folds of which had lent fulness to 
her figure, wearing a demure white cap instead of a bonnet, the 
slight color born of exercise now faded from her dark cheeks, 
she was thinner, grayer, and older than I had at first supposed. 
And there was no insolence now in her regard. A gleam of 
suspicion, distrust, or dislike — one of the three — in the strange 
black eyes that glanced at me for an instant and then turned 
away, but no defiance. She wheeled Hoell’s chair to the table ; 
she handed the coffee, and glanced at her master with the mute 
inquiry whether anything more was wanted. Hoell shook his 
head and flourished his hand, with his napkin in it, towards the 
door, and in doing so dropped the napkin. The house-keeper 
returned and picked it up, gave it into his hand with a subdued, 
officious eagerness curious to see, and turned to go once more. 
At the very threshold her quick observation showed her that 
the light from the nearer window fell with glaring brightness 
upon Hoell’s face. She noiselessly returned and adjusted the 
blind, and then as noiselessly left the room. I followed her 
with my eyes. Hoell noticed the look, and put his own inter- 
pretation on it in a moment. ‘ You’re thinking that for a bach- 
elor’s house-keeper my house-keeper is an infernally old and 
ugly one,’ he said, with that mood and tone upon him which al- 
ways repels one, seeming, as it does, an injustice to his better 
self. * And you’re right ; she is old, she is ugly. But granting 
that anything young and pretty would be a more agreeable ob- 
ject of contemplation, anything Y. and P. has a confounded 
habit of presuming upor^ those qualities, of thinking more of 
her cap-ribbons than her employer’s comforts ; of looking in the 


16 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


glass when she ought to be looking after her work, and of chip- 
ping his china while she contemplates the ultimate possibility 
of becoming his bride. While Mistress Endor yonder — ’ 

“ ‘ Mistress Endor V 

“ ‘ Merely a nickname I call her by when it’s my whim to be 
teasing,’ responded Hoell, wrinkling his sallow little face into a 
grin. ‘ The country people call her a witch, in virtue of the 
contrast between her brown skin and black hair and their own 
tow-heads and raw-beefsteak complexions. I throw it in her 
teeth when I want to put her into one of her rages. She has a 
temper of her own, has Mistress Endor, but she’s a faithful creat- 
ure — a faithful creature. My nurse when I was a boy, my 
house-keeper now. My nurse, too, occasionally ; for, like other 
robust and healthy mortals, I must own to being occasionally 
out of sorts.’ 

“ He stretched his arm out to me across the table, pulling up 
his velvet sleeve and unbuttoning the cuff of his gaudy silk shirt 
to exhibit its anatomy to greater advantage. 

“ ‘ Talking of robustness, look at that,’ he cried. ‘ There’s 
pith and sinew ! There’s a muscular development ! As a judge 
of that sort of thing, my dear Kavanagh, I ask your opinion of 
that limb.’ 

“ I looked at the limb. I said, as candidly as I could, that I 
had never seen anything like it before. Hoell nodded his sandy 
little head triumphantly as he pulled down his sleeve. He was 
in radiant good spirits for the remainder of my stay. He press- 
ed me with assiduous hospitality to eat of every dish upon the 
table. He referred me to the early Briton and the gladiator of 
ancient Rome, and to the heroes of the modern prize-ring, to 
demonstrate that the best possible breakfast for a man who had 
his muscular development at heart was a breakfast of raw beef- 
steaks and malt liquor, while making his own in a sparing and 
bird-like fashion of coffee and dry toast. 

“ He took me round the house and garden before I left. In 
the latter he has had a little observatory built, and a miniature 
equatorial erected, though the telescope points steadfastly over 
the tops of the intervening trees to the Hall, as though, except 
in that quarter, the heavens present no special object of interest 
to the master of the Manor-house. another part of the gar- 
den stands his laboratory, where he makes chemical experiments 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


77 


and develops photographs taken by himself with appalling un- 
likeness to the nature they misrepresent, and his studio, a neat 
edifice of wood and corrugated iron, with a wooden lay-figure 
drunkenly propped up in one corner inside, and a study in oils, 
of the direst kind, reposing half finished on the easel. It repre- 
sented, if I remember, a knight in armor helping a mediaeval 
lady out of a difliculty in which a dragon had been concerned, 
and was very romantic and exceedingly imaginative, and extraor- 
dinarily out of drawing. In the features of the knight — whose 
developments were wonderful — I recognized a likeness to the 
artist, and told him so. Hoell chuckled and rubbed his hands, 
asking, ‘ Did I see no resemblance in the face of the lady to any 
other face I knew V 

‘‘ ‘ No,’ I told him. I had seen no living countenance whose 
facial architecture was of the same period and description. ‘ No !’ 
I said. He was hugely disappointed, it was plain. 

“ ‘ No V he repeated, staring disconsolately at the work of his 
brush. ‘ No ? Think again !’ 

“ I thought ; to no purpose. 

“ ‘ Never mind,’ said Hoell, dismally. 

“ I had a bad memory for faces, I told him. The likeness 
might be an admirable likeness, and my infirmity alone to 
blame ! 

“ He shook his head. No man having once seen the face he 
had tried to reproduce upon his canvas would be likely to forget 
it, he gave me to understand. And in a sudden fury of disap- 
pointment and anger at his own failure, he caught up the palette- 
knife and stabbed the canvas through and through. 

“ ‘ I’m a libellous idiot,’ he cried, hacking and ripping away 
quite fiercely; and the picture’s a miserable daub!’ His an- 
ger sank down and died in another moment. He pointed to 
the picture hanging in tatters from the frame. 

“ ‘ I wish I hadn’t done it 1’ he said. ‘ I feel like a murderer, 
somehow. I worked at it so carefully, day by day, fancying 
with each touch of the brush that it grew more and more like — ’ 
He stopped and sighed. ‘ I wish I hadn’t done it,’ he said. ‘ But 
wishing is no use now. Come away.’ 

“He took me back to the house, moving more slowly and 
more painfully than usual, in the weariness and depression that 
had fallen on him. But there we found one of the Hall servants 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


7S ' 

waiting with a message from his mistress, and Hoell’s spirits 
sprang up miles above zero again as he tore open the note. 

“ ‘ It’s Rosalind’s birthday on Friday. Will I mind, once in a 
way, the presence of a few old friends — friends like myself, too 
old to be overlooked on such an occasion — and come to dinner at 
seven ?’ he quoted. ‘ Will I ? For you to ask, dear madam, is for 
me to obey !’ He kissed the note with grotesque devotion, and 
thrust it in his breast. He hobbled to his elaborate writing- 
table, he rattled out all the drawers, noisily looking, for paper 
and pen. ‘ I must have a new quill to write with,’ said Hoell. 
‘I must have paper that smells as prettily and feels as smooth 
as the paper the invitation is written on. My phrases must be 
choice — my language clear and flowing, like my ink, when I 
write in answer to a lady’s letter.’ I approached him with the 
intention of taking my leave — Hoell looked round at" me, over 
his shoulder, and waved me off imperiously. ‘ Don’t, there’s a 
good fellow, discompose me by saying good-bye at this particu- 
lar moment. Wait till I’ve written the answer to my invitation 
and sealed it and sent it away !’ I humored him by remaining 
and looking at the books and pictures while he wrote. A col- 
lection of miniatures on ivory, and portrait-medallions in wax 
and other materials, arranged in a case handsomely lined with 
purple velvet and hanging on the wall, attracted my attention. 
The subjects of the miniatures were, without exception, women, 
and seemed — judging by their costumes, and more particularly 
the styles and fashions exhibited in the arrangement of their 
hair — to have been selected indiscriminately from every period 
of the world’s civilized history down to the present time. One 
or two of the faces were familiar to me, others unknown. 
Some were evidently valuable and rare, others of no particular 
worth or merit in execution. I was looking at the miniatures 
when Hoell sealed his note; I was looking at them still when, 
having triumphantly despatched it, he rejoined me. 

“‘You have been looking at my miniatures?’ he said. I ac- 
knowledged that the collection had interested me. 

“ ‘ It may interest other people, dozens of years hence,’ re- 
turned Hoell, ‘ when it hangs on the walls of the museum to 
which I have left it in my will.’ 

“ ‘ Is the collection — ?’ I began. 

“‘Of value?’ supplied Hoell, pompously. ‘Inestimable — in 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


19 


the eyes of a scientific student who had chosen for his especial 
line of study the tendency, innate or inherited, of that unfortu- 
nate class of human beings whom we, in our insufferable self- 
conceit, call criminals, to crime.’ 

“ ‘ To crime ?’ I repeated. 

“‘To crime,’ reiterated Hoell. ‘To the crime of homicide 
particularly : secret, stealthy, deadly murder, by the most secret,” 
the stealthiest, the most deadly of all weapons — poison, in a 
word.’ 

“ I started. 

“ ‘ Every one of these charming creatures, all graceful, all cul- 
tivated — I make it a rule to admit no common murderess into 
my choice little gallery — every one of them has put out of the 
way one inconveniently obtrusive fellow-creature or more,’ went 
on Hoell. ‘ Some, even, like female Davids, have disposed of 
their thousands — by means of poison ; poison in drops, poison 
in doses, poison in little pills, poison in gloves and peaches, and 
pretty bouquets and sweet-scented gloves — poison administered 
with all the subtle ingenuity which distinguishes the female 
mind, and all the refined cruelty of which the female heart is 
capable. Pretty dears ! Ingenious creatures !’ 

“ He smiled complacently upon the leering, painted crew. He 
took a gilt taper-rod from the mantle-shelf, and indicated each 
member of the homicidal sisterhood with a tap on the glass that 
shielded her celebrated features from the dust, as it came to her 
turn to be numbered and classified. 

“ ‘ Class one ; period, classical,’ began Hoell, assuming the tone 
and manner of a showman. ‘ Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. From 
an ancient coin. One of the first female toxicologists known to 
history. Fond of experimenting on the human subject — widely 
celebrated in consequence of that little intrigue with Mark An- 
tony, for the exact details regarding which I must refer you to 
ancient history and the, works of Shakespeare. Expired from 
the combined effects of remorse, and the bite of an asp, some- 
where about the year 30 b.c. Seductive and voluptuous type 
of person, no doubt, but if I had been in Antony’s sandals,’ said 
Hoell, confidentially, ‘ that deplorable affair of Actium would 
never have happened ! 

“ ‘ Portrait-medallion in wax, from a cameo in the celebrated 
Museum of Florence. Profile of the Empress Agrippina, cele- 


80 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


brated in history as being the mother of that much maligned 
potentate, Nero. Poisoned her third husband Anno Domini 54. 
Exact medium employed not known, but probably hellebore. 
Fine profile — calm, benevolent, and agreeable. This virtuous ma- 
tron was removed, by order of her son, a few years subsequently. 

‘“Class number two; period, mediaeval; Queen Eleanor, spouse 
of Henry II. From an illuminated eleventh -century missal. 
Heroine of a certain romantic episode, in which a dagger, a 
bowl, a bower, and fair Rosamond were also included. Queen 
Joanna of Naples, another royal poisoner of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. Lucrezia Borgia, the distinguished Italian annihilatress of 
the fourteenth century, praised for her virtues by the poets of the 
time, and punished for her vices by being made into an opera 
later on. Both from authenticated likenesses by painters of the 
period. 

“ ‘ Catherine de Medici, fifteenth century. The science of re- 
moving unnecessary human units from out this mortM scheme 
was practised with uniform success by this reprehensible but at- 
tractive person during the whole of a long and actively-spent 
existence. Aha!’ Hoell tapped the miniature twice upon the 
stomacher. ‘ Here’s a slyboots,’ he said, approvingly „^with his 
head on one side. ‘ Look at her ! Royal dignity, modest ma- 
tronly grace, in every line. Ripe and tempting, though. ' Cor- 
nelia, with a dash of Uncle Toby’s widow, and a spice of the 
devil to add to the flavor ! Think of all the schemes and plots 
that matured behind that smooth, fine forehead ! Think of all 
the passions that writhed and twisted and hissed and bit under 
that plump, white bosom, and lurked like imps in those seductive 
little dimples, and frolicked, like imps again, in the corners of 
those handsome black eyes, and admire Catherine — as I do ! 

“‘Sixteenth century. The Countess of Essex, afterwards 
Countess of Somerset, a reprehensible beauty of the Court of 
James the First. She punished a meddling baronet. Sir Thomas 
Overbury by name, for prejudicing her matrimonial prospects, 
by getting him imprisoned in the Tower and afterwards poison- 
ing him in a pie. Let a potion, from salts and senna to prussic 
acid, be offered me to-morrow morning by such hands, and I 
positively declare — I’ll drink it.” 

“ He sighed, and ogled the countess pensively before pro- 
ceeding. 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


81 


“ ‘ This attractive young person, represented in white robes, 
clasping a crucifix, is not a saint or a martyr, as one would at first 
suppose. Her name was Mary Margaret D’Aubray, Marquise de 
Brinvilliers. She was a belle, a wit, and a widow, well known in 
Parisian society of the sixteenth century ; and, not content with 
playing at love and intrigue, as other charming ladies did, she 
went a little further, and played at filling church-yards. She 
succeeded so well that she lost her head — a pretty one, as you 
see. They afterwards publicly burned her body. A barbarous 
era ! — a barbarous era ! 

“ ‘ Class number three ; seventeenth century to our own time. 
Oval medallion, carved in ivory, valuable and rare. Taken from 
a portrait by Nicolese, of Padua, of Signora Tofania, a famous 
female druggist, who attained a handsome competence and a 
world-wide reputation for the artificial manufacture of widows 
— I forget in whose reign. Gifted creature * One would wish 
"to have known her ! 

“ ‘ Painting on china — by a French artist who attended her 
trial and fell in love with her before it was over — of Marie For- 
tun6e Capelle — the widow of Lafarge — tried at the High Court 
of Assizes, at Tulle, in 1840, accused of having poisoned her hus- 
band with arsenic, administered in a plum-cake. First, second, 
and third analyses of Papa Lafarge’s remains having proved 
abortive, the prisoner became the subject of an extraordinary 
manifestation on the part of the public — though the Advocate- 
General and the President of the Tribunal, from first to last, were 
adamant to her very pronounced attractions and implacable in 
their unshaken conviction of her guilt. Result : institution of a 
fourth analysis. Consequence ; arsenic detected in Papa La- 
farge ! Amid the sobs of her counsel, the groans of the gen- 
darmes who had guarded her, and who were in love with her to 
a cocked hat — and the cries and curses of the crowd, who from 
first to last treated her as a victim, she was sentenced to penal 
servitude for life, with preliminary exposure in the pillory of 
Tulle. She spent twelve years in close confinement, and died 
shortly after her liberation from captivity by the Emperor Na- 
poleon HI., at the age of thirty-seven ! 

“ ‘ Sketch, in crayons, of Miss Margaret Baker, a young Scotch 
lady of high social position and considerable charms. Tried at 
Glasgow, in 1857, for the murder of her lover, Luigi Marotti, an 

6 


82 


DRAGON'S TEETH. 


Italian dancing-master — a villain who only got what he deserved, 
in the opinion of a good many people, myself included. Arsenic 
again, administered in a cup of tea. Margaret’s youth and beauty 
saved her from hanging. She was acquitted in the face of evi- 
dence sufficiently strong to have hanged an archbishop, amid 
shouts of rejoicing from the general populace ; and in six months 
from that time she married the counsel for the defence. He 
lives still. Happy man ! 

“ ‘ Portrait of Mrs. Oakley, from a photograph sold in the 
shop windows at the time of her trial, two years ago. Mrs. Oak- 
ley was the middle-aged but attractive widow of a military 
officer. Mrs. Oakley found her pension insufficient to live upon 
comfortably, and accepted a situation as house-keeper to an elder- 
ly bachelor of literary tastes. For five years the elderly bachelor 
and his engaging house-keeper lived in absolute harmony, and 
then — as the novelists say — clouds began to gather upon the hori- 
zon. The elderly bachelor was rash enough to fall in love with a 
pretty young lady ; the elderly bachelor became a Benedict in 
due course, and brought home his wife. Mrs. Oakley received 
the new mistress with touching submission and delicate respect. 
Mrs. Oakley handed over her keys, but she remained in the 
house, though on the slightly altered footing of a companion and 
friend — to her supplanter. Three months hM scarcely passed 
before the young wife of the house-keeper’s elderly master fell 
ill. The doctors were called in and ascribed the indisposition to a 
purely natural cause. The doctors were wrong. Twenty-four 
hours after she expired in the arms of the ex- house-keeper, and 
the elderly Benedict, to all intents and purposes, was an elderly 
bachelor once more. Certain suspicious post-mortem appear- 
ances led to an inquest on the remains. Analysis revealed the 
presence in the body of a certain vegetable acid, in quantity 
sufficient to have killed half a dozen women. Inquiry elucidated 
the fact that Mrs. Oakley had purchased, from a neighboring 
chemist, a preparation containing this acid in solution — for some 
alleged domestic purpose — only a few days before the young 
lady’s death. As might have been expected, the inquest resulted 
in the trial of the agreeable widow of the military man for the 
murder of her master’s wife. The evidence obtained in the 
course of cross-examination contributed comparatively little to 
the establishment of the house-keeper’s guilt, but a great deal to 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


83 


the detriment of her character — and that of her elderly master. 
Here English public opinion — like Scotch public opinion in the 
case of Margaret Baker — pronounced Mrs. Oakley to be guilty, 
as far as her relations with her master were concerned, but in- 
nocent of the crime of murdering her master’s wife. Useless, as 
far as the verdict went. The law condemned Mrs. Oakley to 
be executed ; the law carried out its sentence to the last. She 
hangs here in my collection of murderesses, but there are peo- 
ple whose belief in her innocence remains unshaken to this day.’ 

“The case had been made into niches to hold sixteen por- 
traits; and of these fifteen were occupied, leaving one place 
void and empty. Hoell tapped the remaining three portraits 
with his wand, and detailed the crimes perpetrated by their 
originals, and the leading particulars of their trials, with the same 
old relish for his subject and the same minute attention to locali- 
ties and dates that he had shown all through. 

“ ‘And so we come to the end of the collection,’ he said, drop- 
ping his show-man’s manner as lightly as he dropped his show- 
man’s wand, and looking at me in the old whimsical way. I don’t 
know what possessed me. I laid my finger on the empty niche. 
I spoke to Hoell with a coarse levity, of which — considering the 
hideous character of the subject on which I jested — I ought to 
have been heartily ashamed. 

“ ‘ Not the end, yet,’ I said. ‘ Here’s one murderess’s cpll 
waiting for her, empty. What woman’s face, of all the faces in 
the world, is doomed to fill this vacant place, I wonder?’ 

“ ‘ Why,’ returned Hoell, lightly, ‘ that’s a question the answer- 
ing of which, with all our cleverness, we must leave to Time — to 
Time and to Fate !’ ” 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ Septemher 18(h. 

“ Nothing of great note to note, except that to-morrow is the 
anniversary of my pretty niece Rosalind’s twentieth birthday, and 
more people than Hoell and myself have been racking their brains 
over the problem which renews itself before this fortunate young 


84 


’ DRAGON’S TEETH. 


person’s friends and relations several times in the course of a year : 
how to make a 'present of something that she has not got^ to a 
'young lady who has got everything inAhe world ? 

“ It sounds a little like the title to an essay of Swift’s, or some- 
body’s. 

“ But Hoell and I have triumphed over the difficulties that at 
first appalled us. Kosalind’s hunting-spur, disabled the other day, 
is to be replaced by the loveliest instrument of equine torture — 
in silver gilt — that ever was seen, and the miniature hunting-crop 
that is to accompany it is a like marvel of unfeminine perfection. 
Rosalind’s desire — the universally expressed desire of polite so- 
ciety at the present moment, politely desirous of following in the 
musical footsteps of a Royal Christy Minstrel — Rosalind’s desire 
to learn the banjo is to be assuaged by her uncle George with 
the gift of a Spanish guitar. 

“ I found it among my traps — or, as a lady would say, my things 
— which have been forwarded from Hull in due course, tucked 
away in the corner of a big chest, with the marks of twenty dif 
ferent custom-houses on it, and addresses, plain and partly ob- 
literated, in every language under the sun. It is small and light, 
of rich color and fine grain, and admirable tone. The art of 
making such an instrument is practically a lost art, except among 
the — 

“ The gypsies have no place in this respectable record of Chris- 
tian domestic life. Never mind the man who made my niece’s 
guitar! It is enough to say that he was one of the most abomi- 
nable rascals I have ever met, as well as the most skilled work- 
man at his own trade. Though, indeed, horse -stealing, purse- 
cutting, spying, swindling, and blackguardism generally, were 
trades of his ; and guitar-making only came in as a resource in 
the event of the failure of more risky employments. 

“ But my Journal must be shut up with the ink still wet on 
the leaf. Here is the page-boy, grinning at my elbow, with a 
note from my sister-in-law. Here is one of the maids, simpering 
outside the door, with a message from my niece. Mrs. Kavanagh’s 
kind regards, and will I step down-stairs to her private room and 
be consulted on a matter of business ? Miss Rosalind’s best love, 
and she’s waiting for me at the courts, with every intention of 
carrying out her recent threat of teaching me to play lawn-tennis. 
Business before pleasure — of that apoplectic kind. I have sent 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINIJED. 


85 


my love to Rosalind — with an excuse — and I’m going to answer 
my sister-in-law’s message in person ! 

“ Mrs. Kavanagh’s private room— it used to be the boudoir in 
my mother’s time ; but its present owner manifests a healthy dis- 
like to the employment of foreign terms where honest English 
words are as suitable ^or all purposes — Mrs. Kavanagh’s private 
room is at the rear of the house on the ground-floor ; and in com- 
mon with the drawing-room, the dining-room, and the library, 
possesses French windows opening on the paved terrace that looks 
upon the garden. The carpet, the window -draperies, and the 
heavy velvet curtains that divide the sitting-room from the bed- 
room beyond are all in the same subdued, delicate shade of taw- 
ny pink which was old-fashioned when I was a boy, and has now 
turned up again, at the top of the upholsterer’s tree, as the very 
newest thing out. The panelling and wood-work and furniture 
of the room are in white lacquer, just as I remember them in 
the dear old days ; delicately painted and inlaid with groups and 
garlands of leaves and flowers in the same shell-like shade of 
tawny pink as the carpet and curtains. As of old, the room over- 
flows with curiosities and feminine knick-knacks ; rare china and 
valuable specimens of English water-color art hang on the walls 
and load the stands and brackets ; the very clock upon the man- 
tel-piece — a valuable specimen of antique French buhl and brass- 
work, with a figure of Time on the top of it, and a musical-box 
in its inside — is the one I used to wonder at and listen to when 
I was a child. The room is unchanged, only it owns a new mis- 
tress now ; and as I looked at her on entering, it struck me that 
the surroundings that once seemed part of, and appropriate to 
my mother’s lovely old age, made a no les's effective setting now 
for my sister-in-law in her beautiful maturity. 

“She was leaning at her writing-table, with her chin upon her 
hand, deep in thought. When I went in she turned and smiled, 
her own charming smile, at seeing me. She gave me her cordial 
hand. She appealed to me in her mellow tones to help her with 
my advice. And I — who am not capable of advising myself cor- 
rectly in the most trivial dilemma — I threw myself into the 
breach! I assumed the magisterial air of a second Solomon — 
for I knew that nine women out of ten, in appealing to a 
masculine creature for counsel and guidance, generally take the 


86 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


precaution of letting him know first what they expect him 
to say ! 

“ The business was of sufficient, if not portentous, gravity. It 
related to Rosalind’s birthday dinner-party. My sister-in-law, in 
considerate recognition of my long absence from my native land, 
began by informing me that- — to solemn domestic festivals, such 
as christenings, birthdays, weddings, or funerals — it is the cus- 
tom to invite all the oldest mutual friends of the family, without 
previous selection, whether they gef on well together or whether 
they don’t. Their tenderest susceptibilities may be wounded by 
being asked to meet persons whom they regard with mild dis- 
trust, deep suspicion, or ardent loathing, as the case may be; but 
if they are not asked, it is certain that their finest feelings will 
be outraged beyond redress. Two irreconcilable elements min- 
gled in the composition of ray niece Rosalind’s birthday party. 
Lady Butterworth and Mrs. Dabb-Hendley were^the two irrecon- 
cilable elements — Lady Butterworth and Mrs. Dabb- Hendley, 
leaders of the rival political factions of the Daffodils and the 
Greens. 

“ ‘ Are they certain to quarrel, if they meet?’ I asked. 

‘“Almost absolutely certain !’ said Mrs. Kavanagh. 

“ I had a bright idea. 

“ ‘ Do as you have done on all former occasions of the kind.’ 

‘“Upon former occasions of the kind,’ she returned, ‘there 
was no need for caution. A twelvemonth ago Lady Butterworth 
and Mrs. Dabb - Hendley were bosom friends, and copied each 
other’s bonnets as religiously as they now differ from each oth- 
er’s political opinions. The Daffodil had hardly taken root in 
the county a twelvemonth ago. We were not patriotic in those 
days, but we were peaceful. Dare I say that I regret those days, 
for one?’ 

“ ‘ I say so, too,’ I burst out, ‘ if politics, green or yellow, or 
all the colors of the solar spectrum, are to interfere with the har- 
mony of my niece Rosalind’s birthday party ! But I see what 
has got to be done, if you don’t. A warning has got to be 
wrapped up, like a pill, in a gracefully worded invitation, in the 
case of both these ladies. Not a word more, not a word less on 
either side. We won’t leave a single loop-hole for jealousy to 
look out of. Every “ i ” shall be dotted and every “ t ” crossed 
in exactly the same way, and two special messengers shall deposit 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


87 


the respective missives — at an identical moment, if possible — in 
the hands of Lady Lutterworth and of Mrs. Labb-Hendley.’ 

“ My sister-in-law looked at me gratefully. My sister-in-law 
took my advice. I wish she hadn’t ! 

“ ‘ An admirable idea !’ said my sister-in-law. ‘ A capital plan ! 
Ah ! how our trivial feminine diflSculties vanish, once the light 
of reason is brought to bear upon them by a clear-headed, log- 
ical man.’ With this graceful tribute to the superiority of the 
male intellect, my sister-in-law, looking handsomer than ever, sat 
down to write the letters. 

“ Here is No. 1 : » 

“ ‘ Dearest Lady Bdtterworth.— To-morrow being Rosalind’s birthday, 
we have asked a few of our very oldest and dearest friends to dine with us 
in a quiet humdrum way. Will the oldest and dearest of them all join us 
on the occasion ? Affectionately yours, 

“ ‘ Catherine Kavanagh. 

‘“P.S. — Mrs. Dabb-Hendley is coming. Do you mind meeting her for 
once ? — C. K.’ 


“ No. 2 ran : 

“ ‘ Dearest Mrs. Dabb-Hendlet. — To-morrow being Rosalind’s birthday, 
we have asked a few of our very oldest and dearest friends to dine with us 
in a quiet humdrum way. Will the oldest and dearest of them all join us 
on the occasion ? Affectionately yours, 

“ ‘ Catherine Kavanagh. 

‘“P.S. — Lady Butterworth is coming. Do you mind meeting her for 
once ? — C.K.’ 

“We divided the labor between us. I dictated the letters, 
Mrs. Kavanagh wrote them ; and I put them in the envelopes — 
I wish I hadn’t, now ! — which she directed. 

“ When it was all over, she gave me her charming hand again, 
and thanked me for my advice and my assistance. 

“ ‘ But you shall be rewarded,’ she said, smiling at me, as she 
unlocked a little drawer in her writing-table. You shall see 
Rosalind’s birthday present before she sees it herself.’ From a 
nest of cotton-wool she took a little jeweller’s case and opened 
it. It held a pretty gold bracelet. She touched a little knob, a 
tiny door jumped open. Rosalind’s charming bracelet held some- 
thing more charming still. The portrait of Mrs. Kavanagh. 

“ I took the dainty ornament in my hand and examined the 


88 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


portrait. The sun might have originally given a faithful repro- 
duction of Mrs. Kavanagh’s face, but the artist had spoiled the 
sun’s work with the best intentions in the world. The straight, 
rather massive outlines were there, and the serious gray hazel- 
eyes. The hair in the portrait was light glossy brown, like Mrs. 
Kavanagh’s hair, but without the line or two of silver that, in 
the eyes that love her, only adds to its beauty. The firm, tender 
lines of the mouth had been rudely coarsened, the squareness of 
the jaw and chin unpleasantly exaggerated, and the whole face 
too heavily overlaid with color. As I held the portrait in my 
hand and compared it with the original, the sight of it disap- 
pointed and hurt me vaguely. The sight of it had another ef- 
fect on me besides. I stood again in imagination in Hoell Brin- 
nilow’s studio, before his weak, poor miserable outrage on a noble 
art. I heard him ask me again whether I detected in the face 
he had vainly striven to portray no likeness to any face I knew. 
Had I by chance stumbled upon the secret of that lonely heart, 
the hidden romance of that wasted, withered life? Did Hoell 
love the woman who had been in her beautiful compassion and 
tenderness more than a sister to him, more than a sister should 
be loved, after all ? 

“I looked up from the portrait. With sad conjecture of the 
truth written in my own eyes, I met the eyes of its original. 
Startled and shocked by the expression that confronted me, I 
was betrayed into an exclamation of surprise. For as the 
gypsy woman had looked at me on the morning of my early 
visit to the garden, so my sister-in-law looked at me now. 
Anger and surprise combined in her expression ; resentment 
and defiance mingled in her tone when she spoke. Of what 
should she have suspected me ? What had I done to merit her 
anger? 

“ ‘ Give me back the bracelet,’ she said, harshly. ‘ What do 
you see in the portrait ? Of whom does it remind you that you 
should look at me like that ?’ 

“ She snatched the ornament from me before I had time to 
give it her, with a roughness strangely foreign to her nature. 
She hid it in her pocket out of sight. The moment she had 
done this she was herself again. The strange look died out of 
her eyes; she held out her hand to me with her old sweetness 
of manner ; she apologized unaffectedly for the momentary loss 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


89 


of her temper in tones which would have won pardon for a much 
more heinous offence, to my thinking. 

* Shall I tell you what was the matter with me just now?’ 
she said. ‘ Shall I let you into the secret of my weakness ? Ah, 
my friend, your face, as you looked at my portrait a moment 
ago, told me what your lips would never tell me: that I am 
getting old, and the sun and the artist between them have found 
it out.’ She stopped me when I would have spoken, by touch- 
ing my lips with her hand. * Do you, who are a man and have 
no vanity in your composition, despise me for being a woman 
and yielding to the universal failing of my sex ?’ she said, softly. 
‘Ah, no. Men are generous. You, of all men, are too generous 
for that.’ 

“ How well she understood me, the frank, noble creature ! 
Despise her! I had no words Wherewith to disclaim such an 
idea. I could only kiss her hand in silence. 

“ ‘ Let me tell you what I have decided,’ she went on. ‘ Ros- 
alind shall have the bracelet without the portrait, after all. We 
will take it out of its little case, and we will put in, instead, a bit 
of my hair, and a bit of her father’s, and a bit of yours, plaited 
together, to remind her of us when she is a middle-aged woman 
and we are dead and gone. Let your contribution be made at 
once. Sit down, George, this moment, and let me cut off a lock 
of your nice white hair.’ 

“ I hesitated. 

“ ‘ Come,’ she said ; ‘ it’s for Rosalind’s braceletl You will 
give a lock of your hair to Rosalind, even if you won’t give one 
to me!’ She held up a little pair of scissors persuasively; the 
charm of her voice and her manner would have lured me into 
consenting, like a fool, if she had made a proposition to cut my 
head off, instead of my hair 1 But at that moment my irresolute 
glance, straying through the window, showed me Rosalind cross- 
ing the lawn beyond the terrace, with Sir Philip, like an obedient 
mastiff, following at her heels. 

“‘Never mind my hair, dear lady,’ I said. ‘It’s the wrong 
color to put in a locket; it’s another kind of thing that pretty 
young ladies like to wear. Ask Philip for one of those nice 
crisp, yellow curls of his to put in Rosalind’s bracelet ! Ask Philip 
for that nice honest heart of his, to be made into a cushion for 
Rosalind to stick pins in, and see whether Philip says no or yes I’ 


90 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ Mrs. Kavanagh drew away from me suddenly. 

“ ‘ What are you hinting at V she said, coldly. ‘ What do you 
mean V 

“ ‘ Is it possible, for once, that a woman’s instinct has proved 
inferior to a man’s — where a love affair is concerned V I returned. 

“ She caught my arm and looked me in the face. 

“ ‘ Answer me,’ she commanded, imperiously. ‘ What is it 
that your instinct has told you and my instinct doesn’t tell me ? 
What is it that you see and I don’t see ? Answer me !’ 

“ I raised my arm and pointed to the couple on the lawn. 

“ ‘ Look there !’ 

“Her eyes followed mine. She saw them, as I saw them, 
standing together in the golden autumn sunshine, among the 
flowers, side by side. Ah, the happy, beautiful, selfish young 
creatures — absorbed in one another, wrapped in the blissful knowl- 
edge of each other’s nearness — deaf and blind and insensible to 
the existence of any world outside their own world of thrilling 
happiness and new-awakened love ! 

“ I saw her start. I saw her put her hand to her heart, as if 
a knife -stroke had been dealt her there. I understood, and I 
was sorry for Rosalind’s mother. 

“ ‘ Oh, Rosalind — Rosalind !’ she said. ‘ Has there been so 
little confidence between us in all these years ? Have I deserved 
that a stranger should be the first to show me the secret of my 
daughter’s heart ! Oh, Rosalind — Rosalind !’ 

“ Nothing but that ; no bitterer reproach. But I saw her hands 
go up to meet and cover her face — I heard her sob as she went 
away out of the room and left me.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

** I STEPPED out of the window upon the terrace. I went to 
meet my niece. She came to meet me for her part, and enlisted 
my sympathies by putting both her hands round my arm and 
squeezing it before she claimed them. 

“ ‘ Look at me, Uncle George,’ was her first request, * and tell 
me what you see 1’ 


THE JOURNAL-CONTINUED. 


91 


“ * I see the happiest and the prettiest young feminine party 
in Great Britain, my dear,’ said I. 

“‘You don’t,’ said Rosalind, contradicting me flatly the mo- 
ment I spoke. ‘ You see the most miserable and the most ill- 
used. Look at Philip standing there sulking. Do you know 
what he has done V 

“ I looked at her fresh lips, pouting within a few inches of 
my own, thinking that I knew very well what Philip would like 
to do. I did it myself, straight away, and both Philip and Rosa- 
lind blushed, oddly enough, at that very moment. 

“ ‘ Tell me, my dear,’ I said, ‘ what has Philip done V 

“ ‘ Philip has proved himself a traitor,’ returned my niece. 
‘ Philip has deserted me in the hour of need. Philip won’t come 
and help mamma and me to entertain all the stupid people who 
are coming to dinner to-morrow night ; and he has put forward, 
in extenuation of his unworthy conduct, the clumsiest excuse I 
ever heard made in my life.’ 

“‘Upon/ my soul and honor, it’s not my fault!’ burst out 
Philip. ‘ Upon my honor and soul. Pm confoundedly disap- 
pointed and abominably vexed that I should be obliged to stay 
away on such — such an occasion I I’ve explained to Miss Rosa- 
lind, sir, that I’m not to blame — but she won’t listen to me. 
May I explain to you — V 

“ Rosalind stopped him, with charming impertinence, just as 
he was going to begin. 

“ ‘ Philip has a friend,’ she said, ‘ who disappeared mysteri- 
ously more than twelve years ago, and has never been heard of 
until this minute, when — as mysteriously as he disappeared — 
he turns up again, having travelled from the other end of the 
world on purpose to make himself disagreeable to me.’ 

“ ‘ My dear,’ I said, ‘ it is only reasonable to suppose that 
Philip knows his own business best.’ 

“ ‘ Philip doesn’t,’ said Rosalind, contradicting me as flatly as 
before ; ‘ and if you are going to uphold him in his want of con- 
sideration for me, I may as well leave you together.’ She pre- 
tended to walk away from us in high dudgeon. 

“Philip made a movement to follow her; I laid my hand 
upon the foolish fellow’s arm. Rosalind saw the movement and 
came back instantly. 

“ ‘ He’s the oldest friend I have,’ Philip said, harking back to 


92 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


the old subject. ‘ We were boys together at school, and he 
saved me from drowning — dived, with all his clothes on, to the 
bottom of the deepest pool in the river one hot day, and brought 
me. up in his teeth, as if I had been a squirming puppy and he a 
big Newfoundland dog. I tried to thank him afterwards, and 
he shut me up by giving me the soundest thrashing I ever had 
in my life. “ That’s to teach you not to get into mischief again, 
you little beggar,” he said, “ and to keep you from catching cold.” 
Am I wrong,’ appealed Philip to me, ‘ in calling him my best 
friend — after that?"' 

“ ‘ Why didn’t you tell me that story ?’ interrupted his impe- 
rious mistress, with a stamp of her foot. ‘ Why didn’t you tell 
me that your tiresome friend saved your life? I like him for 
that, of course. But I hate him for thrashing you afterwards, 
and for coming back to monopolize your attentions at a time 
when I want to monopolize them myself. I consider him a nui- 
sance and a bore.’ 

“ ‘ Let her talk !’ I said, nipping Philip’s protest that the 
thrashing did him good, and his friend wouldn’t have come on 
that day of all days if he had known, and so forth, neatly in 
the bud. ‘ What more about your friend ?’ 

“ ‘ We parted, under sad circumstances, twelve years ago,’ went 
on Philip. ‘ He has written to me at odd times, but the changes 
that time has brought to both of us have never brought us near 
enough to each other to allow of our meeting until now. He 
has been travelling in Turkestan and Russia, as the correspond- 
ent of a New York newspaper, during the last few years, his let- 
ter says ; and he only landed in England the other day. And his 
first thought was,’ Philip went on, warming with the subject, ‘ of 
his old schoolfellow and friend. And he is coming to spend a 
few days with me at The Chase, before starting for an un- 
pronounceable somewhere in a perfectly undecipherable quarter 
of the globe — I was always a bad hand at making out handwrit- 
ing! And with the intention of assuaging the rabid desire of 
the American public for information upon the manners, morals, 
history, and religion of an aboriginal race with an absolutely 
hieroglyphical name, through the medium of the transatlantic 
press. And — ’ 

“ ‘ And the day on which your friend is destined to arrive,’ I 
put in, ‘ is the day of the birthday dinner-party ?’ 


93 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

4 

‘‘ ‘ Just so,’ answered Philip. 

“ ‘ Come,’ I said, ‘ the difficulty may be got over more easily 
than you think. Why should not your friend make one of the 
company ? Bring him over to dinner with you at seven o’clock 
— I’ll answer for his being welcome, and so will my niece — and 
the thing’s settled.’ 

“ * The very thing I said myself,’ cried Rosalind. * The very 
thing papa said. The very thing mamma would say, if she 
were here. “Bring your friend over to dinner.” But Philip 
doesn’t see it as we see it. If I stay here, trying to make him, I 
shall j,end by losing my temper,’ said my niece, perfectly uncon- 
scious that she had mislaid that valuable article long ago. ‘ It’s 
unladylike to lose one’s temper. I’m going back to the house.’ 

“She walked off in good earnest this time. Philip, who 
would have followed her with his legs if I hadn’t been there, 
followed her with his eyes instead. 

“ ‘ Give me your advice, sir,’ he broke out, as the pretty, wilful 
creature vanished into the house. ‘ I’m placed in a strange situa- 
tion: I’m faced by no common difficulty in the matter of my 
friend. In common decency "to him as my guest, I can hardly 
leave him to himself on the day of his arrival. In common hu- 
manity to another person — ’ He stopped, and then went on 
again : ‘ Among the guests who may be expected to be present 
at this house to-morrow night is one person in particular whom 
the recognition of my friend would be likely to affect painfully 
and unpleasantly ; who, in his turn, is associated with events — 
long past — which my friend himself would rather not recall — ’ 

“He broke off, or I stopped him by a question — it’s all the 
same. 

“ ‘ Is the person whom your friend is likely to meet in this 
house, and who is associated with past events which are painful 
to him to remember, a man or a woman ?’ I asked. 

“ He answered, ‘ A man.’ 

“ At that moment the sound of a little bell, tinkled gayly, pro- 
ceeded from the house. Rosalind and Hoell Brinnilow appeared 
at the drawing-room window. The little bell, brandished in 
Hoell’s hand, tinkled again. They called to us. Rosalind waved 
her hand. Distance swallowed up the greater part of the commu- 
nication addressed to us, but we distinguished the faintly articu- 
lated syllables forming the two woiids : ‘ Afternoon tea.’ 


94 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“Philip’s attention became diverted, on the instant, back to 
Rosalind. Philip, with ostrich -like subtlety, sheltered his real 
motive for going back to the house behind an affected desire for 
the mild stimulant already mentioned. ‘I think I should like 
some tea — if you’ll excuse me,’ said Philip. He nodded to me 
and started towards the house. 

“ I followed 'him. As he set his foot upon the steps leading 
up to the paved terrace, a man in a groom’s livery came out of 
the house. I recognized the man to be a servant from The 
Chase. He touched his hat, and drew a yellow envelope from 
his belt, and held it out to his master as gingerly as if it had 
been a lighted squib instead of a telegraphic message. 

“ ‘ My lady sent me over with this. Sir Philip,’ he began ; * my 
lady thought it might have been important. I was to give it 
you myself, my lady said, and to bring back word, for certain, 
that there was no bad news.’ 

“Philip tore the crackling envelope open. The receipt of a 
telegram in the country is a different thing to the receipt of a 
telegram in town. I watched his face as he was reading it as anx- 
iously as the groom. I dare say I looked as foolishly relieved as 
the groom did when he crumpled up the telegram carelessly in 
his hand and tossed it away. ‘ No bad news,’ he answered. He 
nodded to the groom, the groom touched his hat and vanished. 
‘ My mind’s at rest,’ said Philip. ‘ The question is answered, the 
difficulty that I spoke of just now has been removed.’ He 
clapped me on the shoulder, cheerfully. ‘ My friend has been 
detained in town,’ he said ; ‘ my friend won’t arrive till the day 
after to-morrow. Nobody will be hurt ; nobody w'ill be vexed. 
And I sha’n’t be obliged to stay away from Rosalind’s birthday- 
party, after all. Let’s go in and tell her.’ 

“ He hummed a tune as he cleared the steps, with the light- 
heartedness of any school-boy. I followed him with the out- 
ward decorum that becomes my age, but with all sorts of con- 
jectures swarming in my brain round the nameless and unde- 
fined figure of Philip’s friend. What is Philip’s friend like? 
Why didn’t Philip tell us his friend’s name ? Who is the man 
who mustn’t meet Philip’s friend? Who is the man Philip’s 
friend oughtn’t to meet? Building up in my mind as inconse- 
quent and meaningless and rambling an edifice as that other 
house — that Jack built.” • 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


95 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

Septemh&r 20th. 

“ Let me recall, and set down in their natural sequence, the 
events of yesterday. 

“ They have had, I confess it, an unpleasant effect upon me ; 
they have shaken and startled me ; they have renewed associa- 
tions and awakened memories which I would rather had re- 
mained undisturbed. The first dissonant chord in the harmony 
of the day was struck at breakfast. I may, in an indirect man- 
ner, have helped to strike it. I don’t deny that the blunder 
originally was mine. Pm not too old to learn a lesson, and the 
lesson I imbibed with my coffee yesterday morning, and took in 
with my toast and eggs, was: never meddle in matters — especial- 
ly where women are involved — that don’t concern you ; never, 
by any chance, give a woman advice — unless you have admirable 
grounds for believing that she isn’t going to take it ! ^ 

“ Two notes were delivered to my sister-in-law as we sat at 
breakfast. One was written in a spidery hand on pale yellow 
paper, and the other in a sprawling one on pale green. Both 
were highly scented, and adorned with indecipherable mono- 
grams. The perusal of these missives had an extraordinary ef- 
fect on the lady to whom they were addressed. 

“ She rose from her chair — my brother’s wife is a tall woman, 
and, as old-fashioned people would say, a woman with a pres- 
ence. She was pale, but composed. She paid no attention 
when my brother, in a tone of unfeigned alarm, asked what the 
matter was. She swept round the table to my side, and laid 
the revolting missives before me. She said in a tone that would 
have done the highest credit to an actress of high tragedy — sup- 
posing one to exist in these degenerate days — ‘ George, George ! 

What have you done?"' 

“ I wanted to know myself. I took up one of the notes ; I 


96 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


inhaled its nauseous odors ; I deciphered its sprawling sentences. 
They ran as follows, as I read them out aloud : 

“‘Dear Mrs. Kavanagh. — The enclosed, received yesterday, I beg to re- 
turn without comment of any kind^ as it evidently was not originally in- 
tended for the perusal of yours truly, ‘ Cecilia Butterworth.’ ” 

“ I unfolded the enclosure. 

“ The wording was mine, the handwriting Mrs. Kavanagh’s. 
It began, ‘ Dearest Mrs. Dabb-Hendley.* A cold sweat broke 
out of me at every pore. ‘Old friends — oldest and dearest of 
all.'* ‘Dearest of all — Lady Butterworth — mind for once?’ 
May Heaven forgive me ! I had put the letters into the wrong 
envelopes ! 

“ No need to glance at the other note. No need to read it ; 
I knew beforehand what it contained. Lavinia Dabb-Hendley 
begged to return the enclosed, which evidently had not been in- 
tended for her perusal, without one word of comment (underlined), 
and remained, with frigid regards, truly, Mrs. Kavanagh’s. 

“ There was a hideous pause, broken by my brother James, an 
easy-going man of few words. In my crushed and broken con- 
dition I felt grateful to him. 

“ ‘ The devil !’ he said, and gave a whistle. 

“ ‘ What will be done to us, mamma?’ asked Rosalind. ‘ Shall 
we be hanged, drawn and quartered, in the good old Conserva- 
tive style, or blown up by the latest invention in the explosive 
line known to science? Will Lady Butterworth and Mrs. Dabb- 
Hendley lead their rival forces to besiege our gates ? Are we 
to be the cause of Uncivil War in England — in the nineteenth 
century ?’ 

“ She ceased her fanciful flow of nonsense, seeing that her 
step-mother was really hurt and annoyed. She rose, and came 
to her side, and kissed her. ‘ You mustn’t be vexed ; I can’t 
have you look vexed on my birthday,’ she said. ‘Besides, 
what do we care for all the old frumps in the county, as long 
as you have got me and I have got you ?’ She kissed her mother 
again. ‘ Tell Uncle George that you forgive him,’ she pleaded, 
with a twinkle in her bright eyes. ‘ Tell him that Lady Butter- 
worth and Mrs. Dabb-Hendley were spoiling for a fight, as Ameri- 
cans say, and that he has given them the opportunity they 
wanted !’ 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


97 


“Rosalind’s argument prevailed where more logical reason- 
ing would have been useless. Mrs. Kavanagh returned the 
caress, smoothing her daughter’s bright hair fondly. Her fore- 
head lost its frown, her eyes their sternness, under the simple 
magic of the touch and the voice she loved ; she held out her 
hand to me with cordiality ; she received my apologies with her 
usual delightful grace. The storm blew over; I reached the 
shore of comparative calmness, wrapped in some remaining rags 
of self-respect. 

“ How the wrath of Lady Butterworth was extinguished, and 
the ire of Mrs. Dabb-Hendley became appeased, I don’t know to 
this day. But, political differences apart, they are sensible, 
agreeable persons enough, and sufficiently attached to Mrs. 
Kavanagh to accept her double apology and explanation with a 
good grace. Perhaps, as Rosalind privately informed me, it 
would have been a severe deprivation to both of them had they 
missed a single opportunity of disapproving of one another in 
public. At any rate, they arrived late upon the neutral ground 
of the Hall drawing-room last evening, arrayed in party mani- 
festations of daffodil satin (softened with black lace), and grass- 
green moire- antique ; and subsequently greeted each other with 
the genial ease and cordial cheerfulness that might have dis- 
tinguished the social intercourse of Roxana and Statira. Sir 
William Butterworth, a bluff, red-faced old gentleman, hnd Mr. 
Dabb-Hendley, who, before he blossomed into a millionaire and 
a land-owner, was well known as a hard-headed, money-making 
Norwich solicitor, followed, and shook hands like men who 
mutually pitied and esteemed each other. Flora Butterworth, 
who, by the way, is a bosom friend of my niece, and Miss Dabb- 
Hendley, who is another, followed, arm-in-arm ; and after en- 
folding Rosalind in turn, sprang elastically back again, and en- 
twined about each other as if the primary tints of green and yel- 
low had been banished from the solar spectrum, and such things 
as political principles had t^ever been known to exist. 

“ The dinner-party was not a large one, and the circumstance 
of everybody’s being an old friend of everybody else’s caused 
the conversation generally to hang fire. There was the elderly 
Scotch doctor — who attended Rosalind when she was a child 
— with his homely Scotch wife, from the neighboring seaport 
town. There was the rector, who grounded me in Latin when I 
7 


98 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


was a boy, with his niece, now a confirmed elderly spinster, who 
grounded me at the same time in love. There was the curate 
and his mother, an irascible old lady in an obsolete China shawl 
and a head-dress trimmed with turrets of lavender ribbon. Lord 
Dedly Slowe, incubating candidate for Slowetown, and Perpetual 
Grand-master of the Daffodil Demonstrators, in that division of 
the county, brought his two sisters, who are good-looking young 
women of the high- nosed, sandy-haired type, and equally af- 
flicted with constitutional inability to pronounce the letter ‘ r.’ 
And Sir Philip Lidyard, handsome and debonair, and as much 
in love with my niece as usual, and, last of all, Hoell Brinnilow, 
made up the list of the invited guests. 

“ Hoell in vivacious spirits. Hoell— it goes without saying — 
splendidly attired and profusely adorned with jewelry. Hoell, 
with a gorgeous opal stud blazing upon the embroidered shirt- 
front that covered his poor, misshapen bosom, and with a button- 
hole gardenia of stupendous size and excruciating odor, encroach- 
ing on his very chin. His very crutches were of ebony, silver- 
mounted, and cushioned with black velvet. The same indomi- 
table determination, or strange idiosyncrasy, which leads him to 
ignore the fact of his own physical feebleness, led him upon this, 
as upon other occasions, to indulge in an extravagance of per- 
sonal adornment which the most effeminate of able-bodied dan- 
Mies would scarcely have ventured to display, while, at the 
same time, his painful, inward consciousness of his infirmity, 
and the shrinking dislike to the society of strangers which 
is its natural result — and which he had conquered on this occa- 
sion out of regard for an old friend — manifested itself in an ex- 
aggeration of speech and demeanor which must have appeared 
strained and unnatural, even to those who knew him least. He 
took Rosalind’s hand and kissed it, and laid it reverently 
against his waistcoat, when she thanked him in her own frank 
way for his exquisite present. He greeted Flora Butter worth — 
a charming but untidy young lady in spectacles, who has recently 
passed her examination in medicine at a London college and 
means by-and-by to carve out a surgical career for herself upon 
the bodies of her friends — with rapturous effusion, and saluted 
Miss Dabb-Hendley like the first figure in a minuet. He quoted 
modern erotic poetry to the rector’s niece, who is fond of airing 
a moderate acquaintance with Wordsworth and Mrs. Hemans. 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


99 


He was a rattling sportsman with the eldest Miss Slowe, who is 
horsey, and a misappreciated poetical genius in the company of 
her sister, who is literary, and writes for, but not in, the maga- 
zines. He complimented Lady Butterworth on her lace and Mrs. 
Dabb-Hendley on her emeralds. He was half-a-dozen men in 
as many minutes, and none of them were natural or at ease ; and 
when Sir William Butterworth, who is absent-mindedly given to 
talking to himself out loud, turned away and growled, in an un- 
dertone, ‘ The man’s mad !’ he only gave expression to the secret 
conviction of a good many of the company. Still, on the verge 
of his wildest extravagance, in the middle of some fresh devel- 
opment of eccentricity, a glance from Mrs. Kavanagh was suffi- 
cient to check Hoell for the time being, and restore him to his 
quieter and better self again. 

“ Dinner over, and hardly over for the curate, who had been 
compelled, at the point of his mother’s eye, to leave untasted those 
dishes that he would willingly have partaken of, and to partake 
of those he would most willingly have left untasted ; and who, 
under the same pressure, had jeopardized his curacy by snatching 
Grace from the rector’s very lips at the outset of the meal, I 
made my abstemious foreign habits the excuse for leaving my 
elderly contemporaries to their wine, and preferring, in common 
with the younger gentlemen, the society of the ladies. 

We had a little music. Miss Dabb-Hendley sat down to the 
piano and let off a flight of musical rockets, with a crash at the 
end, as if the manufactory they were made in had blown up. 
She sang an Italian aria. Her mother whispered to me that she 
had been trained at Milan. True, no doubt ; but, with the pro- 
verbial carelessness of most young ladies. Miss Dabb-Hendley has 
left both her voice and her accent behind her in coming away. 
Then the horsey Miss Slowe gave us a hunting song, with a re- 
frain, a slight thing in its way, but supported on a solid founda- 
tion of ‘ Tally-ho !’ I have been present at a corroboree of Aus- 
tralian aborigines, when the Cockatoo men, and those of a tribe 
belonging to Gippsland,Victoria, engaged in a whooping Contest 
for the possession of a tub of rum-and-sugar. There was some 
yelling on that memorable occasion, on which the Cockatoos had 
the best of it ; but the most piercing and strident of all the Cock- 
atoos might have hung his head abashed in presence of the 


100 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


horsey Miss Slowe! And her literary sister, who possesses am- 
bitions in the elocutionary line, followed up with a recitation — a 
dreadful poem, all about a cavalier who bade his true-love fare- 
well and rode away to the wars on his noble steed ; and how the 
steed came galloping back to the stable door afterwards without 
him. And how there were reasonable grounds to believe that the 
cavalier had been slain in the fray, because there was blood on 
the saddle, and blood on the mane, and blood — in short, every- 
where, though whether it was Radical blood or Tory blood Miss 
Slowe never stopped to say. And when the true-love had prop- 
erly pined away and died, and been put away in her family vault 
— amid applause — we all felt very much depressed indeed. 

“ Mrs. Kavanagh went to the piano after that and sang a French 
song; Rosalind accompanied her. As I listened to the mellow 
tones of her voice, as I looked at her, I acknowledge that, in 
spite of her age, she was the handsomest woman in the room. 
She would merit this commendation, I don’t doubt, in a far more 
crowded assembly. She wore black, a mingling of costly lace 
and satin, and no better foil than the rich dusky material could 
have been found to set off the ivory whiteness of her beautiful 
arms and deep bosom, and of her noble throat. Scarcely more 
than a streak or two of silver mingles with the rich coils of her 
light-brown hair. I noticed as their heads approached, in speak- 
ing to each other for a moment, how much it resembled Rosa- 
lind’s in color. My charming niece, delightfully dressed in a 
color and after a fashion which no ignorant male pen may vent- 
ure to describe, completg^ the picture. 

“ ‘ You have studied abroad,’ I said to my sister-in-law, when 
the cackle of indiscriminating praise began, ‘for you sing and 
speak French as no Englishwoman ever did, to my knowledge, 
who had been educated out of Paris.’ 

“ Oddly enough, the compliment was not appreciated. My 
sister-in-law looked away from me almost as though I had an- 
noyed her. She answered me, coldly and abruptly, ‘ I was edu- 
cated in Paris; I spent the first years of my girlhood in a board- 
ing-school there.’ She moved away from me and began to talk 
to the doctor’s wife about her children at home. 

“ I looked round. Lady Butterworth and Mrs. Dabb-Hendley 
sat at one end of the long room, engaged in stately conference, 
like a couple of commanders-in-chief between whose belligerent 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


101 


nations a treaty of peace had been concluded. My duties, as a 
meraber of the family, clearly lay in the direction of the curate’s 
mother, who had established herself and her turrets in a large 
arm-chair. But when I approached that venerable person she 
waved me off commandingly. ‘ Go and talk to the young ladies, 
my good sir,’ she said, ‘ and leave an old woman to amuse her- 
self in her own way. I’m going to do what I always do in com- 
pany — I’m going to look at the views.’ She opened an immense 
volume of the views, and spread it across her lap. She put on 
her spectacles, and closed her eyes behind them. Her head nod- 
ded — a gentle snore testified to her appreciation of the views. 

“ I went to a window and stepped out upon the terrace. The 
hum of voices and the clinking of decanters mingled with the 
smell of cigar-smoke wafted through the open windows of the 
dining-room. Two figures hovered in the shadow of the house 
a little way down. The rector’s elderly niece, who had initiated 
me when I was young into the mysteries of flirtation, had taken 
the submissive curate for a little promenade by moonshine upon 
the terrace. I leaned upon the low balustrade and looked out 
into the perfumed darkness of the garden. The swish of femi- 
nine draperies, the faint glimmer of a masculine shirt-front, re- 
vealed to me the whereabouts of Flora Butterworth and Lord 
Dedly Slowe, who had gone out for a little stroll by moonshine 
upon the lawn. 

“I returned to the drawing-room. The literary Miss Slowe 
was now the centre of an eager group: Rosalind, Philip, the 
horsey sister. Miss Dabb-Hendley, and Hoell Brinnilow. They 
were all talking at once, and all holding out their hands. I had 
heard of the fashionable mania for palmistry before now. In 
the literary Miss Slowe I saw before me an amateur professor of 
the science — as understood by society in the nineteenth century — 
of reading the future of any human being by means of the lines 
of the hand. It has happened to me, more constantly than I can 
say, in the course of my wandering life, to associate with people 
— members of a race, the name of which need not appear in 
these pages — among whom thd gift of divination, real or pre- 
tended, I can’t say which — is handed down from generation to 
generation, and not acquired. Do I believe in the gift ? What 
can I say? I can only remember the strange thrill that went 
through me years ago, when a dusky-brown finger, travelling 


102 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


over the palm of a stranger in a strange land, traced the course 
of his life back to the source from which it sprang ; and the 
voice, belonging to the owner of the crooked talon, told him what 
the secret of his heart was, and why he had become a wanderer. 
Repeated words spoken in the very room in which I stood now, 
by the beautiful, fickle, foolish young creature, who afterwards 
became my brother’s wife — Rosalind’s mother. Peace to her, I 
say ! If she did me wrong, I forgave it long ago ! 

“ Ah, well ! I stood and listened to the prophecies of the so- 
ciety pythoness. She made some very bad shots, and one or two 
fairly good ones — knowing her ground, it may be presumed, be- 
forehand. Bad or good, they were received with shrieks of 
laughter. 

“ ‘ Did you ever have your fortune told by a gypsy, Uncle 
George?’ asked Rosalind, suddenly. Before I could check ray 
niece by look or gesture, she addressed herself to the corapany. 

‘ Uncle George knows more about the gypsies than anybody in 
the world,’ she said, exaggerating, in the ingenuousness of her 
heart. ‘The beautiful guitar Uncle George raade me a present of 
to-day was raade by a Spanish gypsy, a friend of Uncle George’s. 
Uncle George has lived among the gypsies. He has written 
books about them. He knows all of their history that there is 
to know ; and he talks their language better than they do them- 
selves. For all I can say, he may be able to tell fortunes as well 
as the best of them. If you can tell fortunes. Uncle George, be- 
gin at once !’ cried Rosalind ; ‘ and, oh, for the love of Heaven, 
begin with me !’ 

“ There was no retreat. Before I could escape they closed upon 
me. I became in an instant the centre of a circle of hands, all 
belonging to nineteenth-century young ladies and gentlemen, as 
loudly clamorous and as unaffectedly anxious to peep into the 
future as the most ignorant of their mediaeval ancestors had been 
before them. At the risk of my lungs I calmed the tumult. I 
disclaimed any pretensions to occult lore ; I denied ever having 
entertained, in the remotest way, any dealings with a potentate 
not generally mentioned in good society. It was true that a 
gypsy woman had once looked at my hand and told me my fort- 
une — after a fashion. Among other things of more or less con- 
sequence, she had said that I possessed an extraordinary Line of 
Life, and would live to be an old, old man. 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


103 


‘ Wlien / was about three feet high and wore plaid petti- 
coats’ announced Hoell, ‘ I was taken to have my fortune told by 
^ gypsy woman — or, at least, if she wasn’t a gypsy, she was a 
witch. She used to live in the village ; the people went to her to 
buy herbs to doctor themselves. I believe all the half-pence that 
ought to have gone into the local practitioner’s pocket went into 
hers. Her daughter was my nurse, and my nurse took me to 
have my fortune told.” 

“ ‘ And what did she tell you ?’ broke in Rosalind, irrepressibly. 

“ ‘ She didn’t tell me anything,’ returned Hoell. ‘ She looked 
in my face and she looked in my hand, and she turned her back 
on me without saying a word. And Pleasant Weather burst out 
crying and boxed my ears, and took me home again.’ 

“‘Pleasant Weather;’ the quaint old-fashioned country name 
had a familiar sound, even in ears as strange as mine. The woman 
I encountered in the garden the other day, the woman I followed 
to the Manor-house, had been alluded to by Hoell as ‘ Mrs. 
Weather.’ So Pleasant Weather is the daughter of the old gypsy 
herb-gatherer who wouldn’t tell Hoell’s fortune. A harmless 
interpretation might be put on her visit to the garden after 
that ! The juice of the plant I saw in her hand — while owning 
properties better known and less beneficent — bears some reputa- 
tion among the wild people whose blood runs in the house-keep- 
er’s vein’s as a febrifuge. Perhaps the woman pursues, in a 
quiet way, her mother’s old occupation. Perhaps her mother’s 
knowledge of the properties of plants, harmless and harmful, has 
descended to her ! 

“ ‘ Pleasant burst out crying, and took me home again,’ re- 
peated Hoell, still harping on this reminiscence of his childhood. 
‘I had never seen Pleasant cry before, and it impressed me a 
good deal. She had never boxed my ears before ; and that im- 
pressed me a good deal more.’ 

“ ‘ Perhaps she was out of temper,’ suggested Philip, brilliantly. 

“‘Perhaps she was,’ returned Hoell; ‘or perhaps there was 
something wrong with my Line of Life. Look into my hand, 
somebody who knows, and tell me if there is anything the mat- 
ter with my Line of Life ?’ He extended his hand, palm upper- 
most, for general inspection. He appealed to me, with childish 


104 


DRAGON’S TEETH 


eagerness, to tell him which of the lines upon it was the Line 
of Life. 

“ I took his hand. Amid all the crowded lines upon the palm — 
lines curiously crossed and recrossed, diverging and starting from 
each other to cross again — the line to which such a strange signifi' 
cance has been attributed ever since man began to question Fate 
was plainly visible, starting from the base of the index finger, 
and curving round the root of the thumb towards the wrist; a 
line clearly marked at its beginning, hampered by a tangle of 
horizontal and diagonal lines, a little way on, breaking suddenly, 
a little farther, but rallying and struggling again, until it reached 
the middle of the hand, where it ended abruptly in — 

“ Never mind what that mark was. I once saw a hand in 
which the Line of Life, though starting differently, ended in the 
same curious way. The blood that stirred its pulses was young 
and warm, rich and generous. Its owner’s fortune was told by a 
gypsy woman I knew. Let me only say that what was predicted 
came to pass, and get rid of the subject forever. 

“ As I hesitated another hand made its appearance beside 
Hoell’s. It was large but beautifully formed. The softly-tinted 
palm, the long, firm, delicate fingers, told me that the hand was 
a woman’s. No need to glance up the beautiful half-bare arm 
towards the face. The moment I touched the hand I knew to 
whom it belonged. I bent over, smiling, and scanned it. My 
eye rested upon, at its commencement, and sbwly travelled down, 
the Line of Life. My heart gave a sudden throb and bound. A 
shudder went through me. For the third time in my life I had 
seen the sign, liable to such a dreadful interpretation, in the hand 
of a friend. Before I could speak, Hoell spoke : 

“‘You have told me nothing yet,’ he broke in, gayly. ‘Re- 
lieve my suspense. Put an end to my misery and tell me— ram I 
to be hanged or not ?’ 

“ There was a burst of laughter at this sally. But the room 
seemed to darken for an instant before my eyes. I dropped 
both hands as if they had stung me, and turned away abruptly. 
‘I’m no fortune-teller,’ I said. ‘You must ask the young lady 
who professes to be one to answer your question. As far as I 
can see, one hand tells the story of the other, and that’s nothing 
— as far as my knowledge goes.’ 

“ I walked away. As I did so I beard Mrs. Kavanagh say to 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


105 

Hoell Brinnilow, ‘ Have we offended him ? What does he mean ?’ 

“ And Hoell answered back in my own words : 

“ ‘ “ The story of one hand tells the story of the other.” Look 
at the lines in your hand and look at the lines in mine, and you 
will understand. He means that the end, wben it comes to you, 
will find me ready and waiting.’ His voice sank lower, he looked 
at her — ah ! poor fellow ! — with ineffable worship anff devotion 
shining in his eyes and irradiating his wizened little face. ‘ He 
means that I shall live as long as you live, and die when you die. 
Oh,’ said Hoell, artlessly, ‘ if that is my fortune, I wouldn’t ex- 
change it for a king’s !’ 

“ She looked back at him as indulgently as a sister might have 
done. She spoke, and the sudden noise of chairs being pushed 
back and the opening of the dining-room door prevented my 
hearing her reply. The drawing-room door opened at the same 
instant to admit a servant. The man carried a card upon a sal- 
ver. He approached Philip and whispered in his ear. Philip 
gave a great start, looked round him in a dismayed sort of way, 
and hurried on the heels of the servant out of the room. I am 
of an inquiring disposition. I followed Philip. There was a 
slight bustle in the hall. The elder men had had enough oPtheir 
jokes and their wine, and were trooping out of the dining-room. 
My brother James stood a little apart, talking to a stranger — a 
broad-shouldered man, in careless evening dress — a man whose 
features were in shadow, though his voice sounded, in an odd 
kind of way, as if I had heard it before. Philip stood beside the 
stranger, resting his hand familiarly upon his shoulder. 

“ ‘ No need for apology,’ said my brother, in his hearty, hos- 
pitable way. ‘ No need — no need !’ 

“ ‘ Lady Lidyard insisted on my coming,’ explained the stranger. 
‘Lady Lidyard said : “ You have arrived unexpectedly on a visit 
to my son, and my son isn’t here to receive you. I’m not going 
to tax your patience and my own good-temper by asking you to 
spend an evening alone with an old woman like me.” Her own 
words, I assure you ! “ If Mahomet isn’t here to meet the mount- 

ain, the mountain must go to Mahomet. Dine and change, and 
I’ll order the dog-cart to be ready to take you over to the Hall in 
an hour’s time. As for intrusion, stuff and rubbish ! I’ll answer 
for your welcome when you get there.” What, under the cir- 
cumstances, was I to do? I couldn’t disobey a lady — and my 


106 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


hostess into the bargain. So I did as I was ordered — and here 
I am !’ 

“ ‘ Philip’s friends are our friends,’ my brother responded, ‘ and 
Philip’s mother only did us justice in taking your welcome for 
granted.’ He led the way towards the drawing-room, the broad- 
shouldered stranger striding after him, and Philip, somewhat re- 
luctantly, as I thought, following in the rear. 

“ They encountered me on the way. My brother stopped, and 
touched me on the shoulder. ‘ Let me introduce you to a friend 
of Sir Philip Lidyard,’ he said, ‘ Mr. — ’ 

“ Before the name had escaped my brother’s lips, the lamp- 
light falling fully upon the man’s face revealed it to me as a face 
I knew. It was the face of my fellow-passenger on the Russian 
steamer Volga — the man in whose company I had passed the 
night at the inn at Hull. Strange that chance should have 
thrown us together in such a way, and in the house of my fa- 
thers ! He recognized me — he held out his hand heartily enough. 

‘ Aha i we know each other already,’ he said, in the full, deep, 
resonant voice that I remembered. ‘ No need for an introduc- 
tion here.’* 

“ We shook hands. I fell behind with Philip, as he passed. 
The drawing-room door opened. The pleasant laughter and so- 
cial chat scarcely abated as we went in. Mrs. Kavanagh was 
standing where I had left her, still talking with Hoell Brinnilow. 

“My brother spoke. He said, ‘Catherine, my dear, let me 
present to you an old friend of our friend Philip’s — Mr. Reginald 
Hawley.’ 

“ I saw Hoell start violently. I saw the face he turned to us 
grow as burning red in an instant as though the glowing reflection 
of a furnace had been thrown upon it. But the fierce color died 
out as quickly as it had flamed up, and left him sallow and quiet. 
I knew, as well as Philip might have known, if he had seen it, 
what that sudden stain meant. I recalled, word for word, the 
conversation I had held with Mrs. Kavanagh in the garden. I 
knew that the little fag of Burnham Green and his old torturer 
stood face to face in the persons of the crippled master of the 
Manor-house and Reginald Hawley. Standing as I did, behind 
Hawley, his face was unseen of me ; but doubtless he, too, re- 
membered. 

“ And Mrs. Kavanagh. Did she also — ? My eyes went from 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


107 


Hoell’s face to hers. Great God ! what a look I met ! What 
passion overmastered her, what emotion paralyzed her, I could 
not know. I never shall know, to my dying day. But years 
hence I shall recall that look, and shudder at it as I did last night. 

“ She had grown white to the very lips. Lines, the existence 
of which I had never dreamed of, were marked upon her forehead 
and about her mouth. Her ghastly cheeks were drawn and hol- 
low. Prematurely haggard and prematurely old, she stood before 
us the living wraith of the woman she had been a few moments 
before. Her arms hung helplessly at her sides ; her eyes, large, 
bright, and unnaturally dilated, were fixed upon the face of Reg- 
inald Hawley. 

“ I stood close behind kim. I heard him catch his breath, and 
mutter something to himself ; I couldn’t hear what it was. Very 
likely he was painfully surprised and confounded at finding him- 
self an object of terror and repulsion in the eyes of a beautiful 
woman whom he had never seen until that moment. Is it possi- 
ble that she felt Hoell’s position more keenly than he did him- 
self? Was it possible that her knowledge of the terrible wrong 
that had blackened the past of one of those two men, and irre- 
trievably blighted the future of the other, was alone accountable 
for the strange emotion she exhibited? I can’t say. 

“ Far less time than I have occupied in writing it down was 
taken up in the occurrence of the incident I have recorded here. 
She stood for an instant motionless, looking at Hawley ; Hawley 
stood for an instant, looking at her. The hum of talk went on 
about us. Rosalind’s laugh, responsive to some ancient gallantry 
of the rector’s, broke out merrily and rippled through the room — 
a light, musical sound, the natural expression of a young girl’s 
happy satisfaction with the world and everything in it, including 
herself, and in the same instant Mrs. Kavanagh’s indomitable will 
reasserted itself. She forced herself to breathe, to think, to hear, 
to utter. Color came back to her cheeks, life and motion to her 
limbs again. Her hand did not shake or her voice falter as she 
bade Reginald Hawley welcome to her husband’s house.” 

END OF THE EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL. 


m. 

REAPING-TlME. 


CHAPTER I. 

. SHADOWS. 

An interval of two days had elapsed since the giving of the 
birthday-party at Selbrigg Hall. The reaction which, in the case 
of people accustomed to the uneventful course of country life, in- 
variably follows on indulgence in the mfldest orgy, had followed 
in due course upon the heels of the modest festivities which had 
celebrated Miss Rosalind Kavanagh’s coming of age. The colonel 
had gout, and manifested that he had it by an unusual acerbity of 
speech and gruffness of manner. Ro.salind and Philip had had a 
disagreement. Mrs. Kavanagh was, for once in her life, confined 
to her room by an obstinate attack of headache ; and brown-faced, 
white-haired, cheery-tempered Mr. George had so far succumbed 
to the influence of the prevailing depression as to count up the 
number of pages in his Journal yet remaining to be filled, with 
the unacknowledged motive of ascertaining the number of days 
that yet remained to be spent by a vagabond in the bosom of do- 
mestic respectability. And Hoell Brinnilow ? Anybody who had 
seen him sitting, on this sunny September afternoon, in his library 
chair, with uncut specimens of periodical literature lying on his 
table, and undusted objects of ancient and modern art dumbly re- 
proaching him on every side for his unaccountable failure of in- 
terest in them, would have acknowledged Hoell to be out of sorts. 
His very lameness seemed more pronounced, and when he dragged 
himself out to the garden studio and sat huddled up before his 
easel, with his dried-up palette and unused brushes drooping from 
the nerveless hands that hung idly by his sides, his deformity was 
more painfully apparent than ever. 


SHADOWS. 


109 


There was a fresh canvas upon the easel, the tattered one had 
been carefully hidden away ; but a new and even more execrably 
unartistic representation of the old subject had taken its place. 
There was the mediaeval knight who bore a grotesque likeness to 
Hoell. There was the mediaeval lady whose form and features, 
traced by the hand of respectful admiration, wreaked hideous in- 
justice, such as the most inveterate caricaturist breathing would 
have shrunk from wreaking, upon the personality of Mrs. Kava- 
nagh. 

“ I can’t paint to-day,” Hoell said, despondently ; “ my arms 
and legs are numb and stupid, and my head feels heavy and dull. 
It’s not physical weakness, it’s nervous depression. Strong, mus- 
cular men, more vigorous and heartier than I am, suffer from 
nervous depression. Why shouldn’t I? My blood doesn’t cir- 
culate, my heart doesn’t seem to care to beat ; my system’s tor- . 
pid, perhaps my liver’s out of order. What shall I do to wake 
up my system and give my liver a jog ? Take a little exercise ? 
I will.” 

In a corner of the studio stood a curious machine — an ex- 
traordinary combination of seat, cranks, and handles — firmly 
screwed down to the floor. With infinite difficulty Hoell got 
into the seat, leaned his crutches aside in an angle of the wall, 
and began to wrestle with the handles somewhat after the fash- 
ion of an unskilful rower manipulating the sculls. As in the in- 
terests of the purchaser’s muscular development the handles had 
been made to resist as much as possible, the mere effort to move 
them caused Hoell to pant painfully, and brought the clammy 
moisture of physical weakness starting out upon his sallow, frec- 
kled skin. He persevered a little longer, and then the old weak- 
ness and irresolution mastered him again. His head drooped for- 
ward over his hands, he sighed bitterly. “ Two days since I saw 
her — two dreary, dreary days !” he whispered to himself. “ When 
did such a thing happen before? I can’t remember.” His in- 
veterately whimsical turn of mind asserted itself even then in a 
feeble attempt at a joke. “ I feel as they say a Chinaman does 
in an eclipse,” he said, “ as if a dragon had swallowed up my 
sun.” 

He extricated himself from the machine, reached his crutches 
from the wall, and halted out of the studio. From a knoll of ris- 
ing ground, planted with low shrubs and situated in the barest 


110 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


and least cultivated quarter of the garden, a tower of red brick, 
crude and glaring — the architectural manifestation of another out- 
break of harmless eccentricity on Hoell’s part — reared itself in 
naked hideousness towards the sky. Hoell pulled a bunch of 
keys from his pocket, unlocked a little door in the tower’s base, 
half-hidden among the shrubs that grew about it, and painfully, 
and with many a panting stoppage for rest upon the way, climbed 
the tortuous iron stairs that led to the observatory. He-emerged 
in a dusty and breathless condition on a circular platform floored 
with sheet lead, and bordered with a battlemented parapet, crown- 
ed with a narrow stone coping. Here stood Hoell’s telescope, 
mounted on a stand of Hoell’s own designing, and pointing 
steadily over the tops of the intervening trees towards the Hall. 
Hoell adjusted the instrument with care, Hoell looked through it 
long and steadily. Look as he might, his scrutiny was fruitless ; 
not a sign of human life was stirring in the vicinity of the house, 
not a single object of interest crossed his fleld of vision. He 
swept the horizon to right and left with the same result, and 
turned away discouraged. “Not in the garden, not upon the 
lawn ; nowhere in sight !” he muttered, drearily. “ Still and sun- 
ny, lonely and desolate, a painter would call it a beautiful land- 
scape, but there’s a blight upon it in my eyes. It’s empty of her !” 
He let himself slide down upon a stool, and sat huddled up in a 
heap, supporting his chin between his hands and staring discon- 
solately at the floor. “ 111,” he said, “ 111 yesterday and ill again 
to-day. What does it mean? When did such a thing happen 
before?” He sighed again heavily, and swayed restlessly from 
side to side. “ Serious ! It can’t be anything serious,” he broke 
out, following the course of his own anxious thoughts. “ If it 
were anything serious, should I be well and strong, and hearty 
as I am now? It’s only a headache; she sometimes has head- 
aches, I know. My head aches — with worry. Oh, if I might 
only be near her ! If I might only sit beside her and fan her as 
Rosalind is doing now, perhaps ! My hand is as light, my touch 
is as gentle as a woman’s; she once said so. If I might only 
bathe her head ? If I might only — ” He dropped his own head 
and closed his eyes in contemplation of the rapturous vision he 
had evoked. 

“ Master,” said a voice behind him. 

He started and opened his eyes. The voice of his house- 


SHADOWS. 


Ill 


keeper had called him back to the world of commonplace real- 
ity again. 

“ Haven’t I told you that I’m not to be followed and spied 
upon when I’m up here ?” he said, peevishly. “ Haven’t I told 
you that I’m not to be disturbed when I’m busy with my cal- 
culations ? Many an invaluable scientific discovery has been lost 
to the world through a man’s being disturbed in his calcula- 
isions ! What do you want ? What did you say ? ‘ A man has 

just brought a message?”’ He started round on his seat; he 
questioned the woman with feverish eagerness : “ Is it a mes- 
sage from the Hall ?” 

The house-keeper shook her head, and handed him in reply the 
receipt-book of a railway parcels company, pointing to the blank 
space where it was necessary that his signature should be placed. 
Hoell’s dim eyes brightened, his interest in mundane things re- 
vived as he read the name of the consignor of the package. He 
scribbled his initials on the page, and cheerfully tossed the book 
back to the house-keeper. 

“ It’s a parcel from London ; it comes from my tailor, and it’s 
full of new clothes,” he announced. “Give the man his book, 
pay the man his money, and come and help me open the parcel. 
You shall see the smart new things, all made in the latest fash- 
ion, and help me to try ’em on.” 

The gypsy-looking woman nodded sullenly and went down 
the stairs. Hoell twisted himself up from the stool an,d pre- 
pared to follow her. 

“ Mother Endor is showing a bit of her temper,” he said. 
“ She’s thinking of the tailor’s bill, not of the tailor’s new 
clothes. She grudges me my pleasure in opening the parcel, and 
in wearing the things, because of the money they cost. Hang 
the money ! I’ll pinch and scrape, and make her pinch and 
scrape, till the money’s paid ! I can do without nice things to 
eat and drink, but I can’t do without nice things to wear. La- 
dies like pretty colors and soft fine textures. Why shouldn’t I 
make myself pleasant to look at, in one lady’s eyes ?” His frec- 
kled little face lost its self-complacent smile, his dismal head 
drooped on his breast again. “ I forgot,” he said. “ What good 
are all the new clothes in the world to me when she’s too ill to 
see me in them ? Oh, dear, dear !” And hobbled down the stair- 
case in lower spirits than ever. 


112 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER 11. 

DOES SHE THINK SO? 

A visitor’s arrival delayed the opening of the parcel, and ban- 
ished the subject of the new clothes for the time being from 
Hoell’s mind. The visitor was a white-haired, sunburned gentle- 
man, with the genial manner and agreeable voice of Mr. George 
Kavanagh. He shook hands with Hoell in his hearty way ; he set 
his mind at ease on the subject of Mrs. Kavanagh’s health in a 
few cheery words. An attack of faintness on the night of the 
birthday-party had seriously alarmed the colonel and his daughter 
for the time being; but the local medical practitioner — who had 
been called in, seriously against the will of the patient — had dis- 
posed of the case as a matter of nerves. 

“ Nerves !” repeated Hoell, doubtfully. 

“ Nerves !” repeated Mr. George Kavanagh. “ My sister-in-law, 
who is as nearly perfect as a woman can be, has proved her title 
to the possession of one feminine failing in common with the 
rest of her sex. A little doubt or uneasiness or anxiety, in your 
case or in my case, and we swear a little or fidget a little, and for- 
get all about it the minute our minds are set at ease upon the 
matter, whatever it was, that worried us. But in the case of a 
woman, the effect lingers when the cause is removed. Her higher 
organization — ” 

“Stop a moment,” interrupted Hoell. “You spoke of doubt 
and uneasiness and anxiety in connection with Mrs. Kavanagh. 
Strange words, in my ears, when I hear them coupled with her 
name.” He hesitated. “ Is there any trouble up at the Hall that 
an old friend like myself mustn’t share?” he asked, wistfully. 
“ ‘ None?’ Then why should she be doubtful or anxious or un- 
easy, of all women in the world?” 

“ Suppose a case in point,” returned George Kavanagh. “ Sup- 
pose a sensitive woman, such as my sister-in-law, unexpectedly 
placed in a delicate and embarrassing situation with regard to a 
friend whom she holds in the highest regard and esteem — ?” 


DOES SHE THINK SO? 


113 


“ Stop a minute,” put in Hoell. “ ‘ A friend,’ you say ? Man 
or woman friend ?” 

‘‘A man.” 

“Go on.” 

“ Suppose that friend present, among other invited guests, in 
this lady’s drawing-room, on an occasion of mild family festiv- 
ity,” went on Mr. George Kavanagh. “ Suppose, again, the un- 
expected arrival upon the scene of a certain person previously un- 
known to the lady of the house, but — ” He hesitated. 

“ Go on,” said Hoell again. 

“ But who is, to her certain knowledge, associated in the mind 
of her old friend with events long past, but sad and painful to re- 
call—?” 

“ ‘ Sad and painful to recall,’ ” repeated Hoell. The light had 
begun to fade ; the dusk of the autumn evening had closed about 
them as they sat. Each could distinguish the dim outline of his 
companion’s figure, but their faces were hidden from each other. 

“Suppose that lady witness of a meeting which she would 
gladly, knowing the effect it would undoubtedly have upon her 
friend, have been able to prevent,” Mr. George Kavanagh contin- 
ued. “ Had she no cause for doubt and uneasiness and anxiety 
then ?” 

“She might have trusted to her friend,” responded Hoell. 
“ She might have known that he would give her none.” 

“ He gave her none,” returned the other. “ He behaved with 
noble self-sacrifice and delicate consideration. He proved himself 
a true gentleman in spirit as well as in race. I’m an old fool,” 
said Mr. George Kavanagh, huskily, and clearing his vision of 
something more obscuring than the twilight. “Perhaps I’m 
wrong to speak of this ; but — shake hands, my boy, shake hands !” 

Their hands met and gripped each other in the darkness. 

“ Wait a moment,” said Hoell, faintly, as the other was about to 
leave. “ Did — did Mrs. Kavanagh tell you my story, sir ?” 

“ Mrs. Kavanagh told me the story,” George Kavanagh an- 
swered. 

“ Tell her, then,” Hoell burst out, impulsively, “ that what I did 
that evening I did for her sake. Tell her that only to save her a 
moment’s pain I would give up a thousand lives if I had them, in 
torture, without a groan ! Tell her — ” his voice broke and fal- 
tered. “ Tell her nothing at all. I’m not myself just now,” he 

8 


114 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


said. “ I don’t know what I’m talking about. Good-night, sir, 
good-night !” He went back to the shadowy room as the garden 
gate clicked behind the retreating figure of his visitor. ’‘'‘He 
thinks me noble, he thinks me generous,” he burst out, exultingly. 
“ Does she think so, too ! What did I say or do ? I hardly re- 
member. There stood the great hulking brute, with his broad 
shoulders and his big muscles and his strong legs, and here stood 
crooked little me. And she stood there between us. I saw her turn 
pale, I saw her shiver as she looked at him. All for me, all for 
me, me, me ! What next? He hulked and lowered, and / went 
forward and spoke. Says I, ‘ If you have forgotten the old days 
at Burnham Green, I haven’t. Let me shake hands with my old 
school-fellow for the sake of old times.’ Who looked big and 
who looked little then^ I wonder, in her eyes?” He rubbed his 
lean little hands together, he broke into a chuckling laugh. “ I’ll 
do more still,” he went on. “ I have — aha ! I’ve got a good idea ! 
The Manor-house went to a party at the Hall the other night ; it’s 
the turn of the Hall, now, to come to a party at'the Manor-house. 
Nothing pretentious — a bachelor’s affair. High tea, with music to 
follow, and a little supper before the guests go away. And she 
shall sit at the head of my table and rule my house — as she rules my 
heart. And Mr. Reginald Hawley shall be asked, shoulders and 
muscles and legs and all. I was once his miserable little slave, and 
now my tyrant shall be my tool. He shall serve my ends as I once 
served his. He shall help without knowing it, the dull-brained, 
big-bodied fool, to raise me higher than ever in her esteem, to win 
me a place nearer to her heart than I hold now.” His crutches 
pounded up and down the room furiously; he thought aloud, 
and gesticulated as he went with head and arms. “ When shall 
my party be ? To-morrow or the day after ? The day after. I’ll 
ring for Pleasant and the candles — I’ll write my invitations now, 
to save time.” He stumped gayly towards the lower end of the 
room where his writing-table stood ; he shuffled among the papers 
that heaped it, in search of a little hand-bell that usually stood 
there ; he found it and rang. As he stood looking out of the 
window into the dusky garden, drumming with one hand upon 
the table and tossing the bell idly to and fro in the other, the 
moon rose brightly over the jagged edge of a low, broken mass 
of purple-black cloud that drifted before the breeze blowing from 
the north-west, and the shadow of the observatory tower was 


PLEASANT WEATHER. 


116 


thrown obliquely across the lawn, stretching towards the house. 
In that moment Hoell remembered that he had neglected to re- 
place the cover of the telescope, and reproached himself for the 
omission as he peered up at the brooding sky, anxiously trying to 
discern the signs, if any there were, of coming rain. 

In the same moment he uttered an exclamation of surprise. 

He had left the telescope in the position it invariably occupied : 
pointing in a south-easterly direction towards the Hall. It pointed 
now to the north-west, away over the desolate heathland, away over 
the lonely fields, towards the distant sea. Whose hand had shifted 
its position, and for what reason had the alteration been made ? 
Had his house-keeper suddenly developed an interest in scientific 
pursuits? He sat down abruptly in the nearest chair in bis sur- 
prise at the discovery. Pleasant Weather brought the candles 
into the room. 


CHAPTER III. 

PLEASANT WEATHER. 

“ Come here. Mother Endor,” the cripple said, beckoning the 
woman to approach, without turning his head. 

The house-keeper set down the candles upon the centre-table 
and advanced. She stood at the back of Hoell’s chair; she fol- 
lowed with her shallow, inscrutable glance the direction of Hocll’s 
pointing finger. 

“Do you see that?” He indicated the long shadowy perpen- 
dicular of the observatory tower, and the short horizontal line of 
the telescope pointing the wrong way, with a double gesture of 
his hand. “ Is that your doing? What tricks have you been up 
to now, you secret, black, and midnight hag? What were you 
prying at with my telescope? Is there a gypsy camp on Yelmer- 
ton Heath, or are the witches holding a Sabbath on the Beacon 
Hill? Out with it!” 

Pleasant Weather vouchsafed a grim chuckle in acknowledg- 
ment of her master’s pleasantry. Standing as she stood, close 
behind his chair, Hoell’s keen ears, Hoell’s sensitive perceptions, 
took note of her hurried breathing, and the cold, fresh scent of 


116 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


dewy grass and heather that clung about her dress. He wheeled 
round in his seat and looked at her narrowly. 

“You’ve been running,” he said, suspiciously; “you’ve hard- 
ly got your breath back yet. What do you mean by gadding 
about the country at this time of the evening without my per- 
mission ? You can’t have got a sweetheart at your time of life ?” 

Pleasant chuckled again ; Hoell held up an imperative finger, 
as she might have held up hers at him when he was a child in 
short frocks. 

“I’m your master,” he announced. “It’s my business to 
know about all your goings and comings — it’s your business to 
answer me when I ask you what have you been doing and where 
have you been ?” 

“Out for a breath of air,” Pleasant answered, doggedly. “ It’s 
been a long day and a hot day. You didn’t want me; you were 
talking in here to the man who comes over sometimes from the 
Hall — the man with the white hair.” 

“ He’s not a gentleman, then ?” asked Hoell, secretly amused 
by this display of prejudice on Mother Endor’s part. 

“ If it’s a gentleman’s business to peep and pry, and taunt a 
decent woman with tramp’s gibberish to put her out of counte- 
nance before her inferiors — he is a gentleman,” the woman re- 
turned. “Not else.” 

“ Well, well,” Hoell said, humoring her. “ Where did you go 
when you went out?” 

“ I walked over the common and past the Beacon Hill,” the 
woman said. “ I went round by Yelmerton Shrieking Pits and 
then turned back.” She chuckled again, in her sombre, mirth- 
less way. “ No need to go farther ; I’d got what I wanted and so 
I came home again.” 

“ Did you meet the Ghost of the Shrieking Pits as you went 
by ?” demanded Hoell, with a twinkle in his eyes. “ The goblin, 
or wraith, or fetch, or phooka, or whatever it is that wears a 
woman’s dress and wanders about the pits at nightfall, shriek- 
ing and moaning and wringing its hands ? Pve never seen it my- 
self, but you might, you know, being a bit of a witch in your 
own way.” 

The woman’s white teeth showed out in her brown face, and 
her black eyes looked at her master with a gleam of cunning in 
them. 


PLEASANT WEATHER. 


117 


“I did see a woman nigh by the Shrieking Pits,” she re- 
turned ; “ but if she was a ghost, master, then we’re all ghosts 
together. No, no ! The woman I saw was a woman of flesh and 
blood — gentlefolks’ flesh and gentlefolks’ blood — and stolen out 
after nightfall, master, like any common village girl — to meet 
her lover.” 

“Romeo and Juliet over again,” commented Hoell, interested- 
ly. “ Was Juliet pretty? Never mind about Romeo — he was a 
boor, of course. Tell me whether the girl was nice to look at.” 

“ It wasn’t a girl,” returned Pleasant Weather. She laughed 
outright this time — a coarse, jeering laugh — and* swayed herself 
from side to side, hugging her malice, or her enjoyment, or her 
secret triumph, or whatever emotion it was that possessed her, to 
her bosom with her folded arms. “ It wasn’t a girl,” she said. “ It 
was a woman, master — pretty nigh as old as me. Pretty nigh ! 
Older, master, I dare swear. Change her silks and satins for a 
cotton print like mine, and rub the powder off her face, and set 
her by me here, and even you wouldn’t look at her a second time, 
much less her husband or her lover !” 

“ What have I got to do with her, you old raven ?” returned 
Hoell. “ Middle-aged and married, and with a lover ! She ought' 
to be ashamed of herself. In the good old days, when ladies 
of that sort were brought before the magistrate and the squire 
for punishment, the punishment they got was a ducking in the 
village pond, and an hour or two’s sitting in the village stocks, 
where all the village folks might pelt and stare at ’em. The 
stocks are standing yet, though the old laws aren’t. Let your 
Jezebel of the Shrieking Pits keep out of my way, or I may be 
tempted to revive an interesting custom and make a moral ex- 
ample at the same time.” 

He laughed in the enjoyment of his own humor, and Pleasant 
Weather joined in. Some secret sense of the ludicrous, some 
sinister meaning that was not his^ added to her appreciation of 
the joke. 

“ Laugh, master, laugh !” she cried, clapping her hands togeth- 
er. “ It’s good to see you. Ha ! ha ! master ! Ha ! ha ! In 
the stocks, master, with all the people jeering and pointing ? 
Go on laughing, master — it does me good to hear you — it does 
me good to see you. Better laugh at a woman, master, than cry 
about her, any day in the year !” 


118 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


Hoell suddenly recovered his gravity, hoisted himself upright 
on his crutches, caught his house-keeper by the arm, and twisted 
her unceremoniously towards the light. “ It seems to me that 
you have been drinking, Mother Endor,” he said, coolly. “ Some 
of my French brandy — or some of your own herb-tea ? Which- 
ever it was, it has got into your head. Let me recommend you 
to get it out again as quickly as you can, Endor, because I want 
to consult you about my party — did I say that I had made up 
my mind to give a party here on the night after to-morrow 
night? Ladies are coming, and everything has got to be done 
in first-rate style in honor of those ladies. Do you hear?” 

“ I hear,” said Pleasant Weather. “ Is the lady up at the 
Hall — is Mrs. Kavanagh one of the ladies who are to be done 
honor to, master, on the night after to-morrow night?” 

She put this harmless question to her master in such an ex- 
traordinary tone of voice — she levelled at him as she spoke so 
strange a look out of her shallow, glittering black eyes — that 
Hoell, at a loss for any other explanation of his house-keeper’s 
conduct, was forced to revert, seriously this time, to the idea of 
her being under the influence of liquor. “ She has been drink- 
ing,” he muttered to himself, as he dropped her arm and turned 
away. “ Odd, I never knew her to do it before.” 

“ Aye, have I been drinking,” returned the woman. “ Every 
penny of wages you pays me goes for the strong stuff. Not a 
drop ever passes my lips but what I gets that way ; so you may 
guess to a teaspoonful how much I drink, my darling.” 

“You mean,” retorted Hoell, in high good -humor, “that I 
don’t pay you any wages, you jade. Because I haven’t the money 
to give you, for one thing, and you wouldn’t take it if I had, for 
another ? Eh, Mother Endor, eh ?” 

He patted the house-keeper’s shoulder gently, his sharp white 
teeth shining in the smile that robbed his sallow face of its plain- 
ness and brought into his keen eyes a softer light. The hard 
lines about Pleasant Weather’s mouth relaxed ; she changed and 
mellowed into a different creature, under the influence of the 
kindly touch and the kindly tone. But as Hoell’s hand, having 
bestowed the slight caress, dropped indifferently away — as Hoell 
turned his back upon her, and ensconced himself in the luxuri- 
ous depths of his stuffed and padded easy-chair — the old look 
and the old manner came back again. 


PLEASANT WEATHER. 


119 


“ Ah, that’s the way !” she whispered, in the depths of her re- 
sentful heart. “ A touch, such as he might give to a village brat, 
a kind word such as he might throw to a stray cur, and what am 
I ? Nothing ! But once, master, it was different. Pleasant, who 
fostered you when you were a wailing baby — Pleasant, who 
nursed you back from death to life — Pleasant, who watched and 
tended yon, sickly lad and ailing man — she was all to you, as 
you to her, in the old days. Good days those were to live in, 
master, but they’re gone, never to come back no more, and 
Pleasant knows who she has got to thank for it.” 

“ It’s time I had my supper,” proclaimed the unconscious ob- 
ject of her unspoken thoughts. “ It’s been a long day and a 
dreary day. I want to go to bed and get it over, as I used when 
I was six years old. What are you waiting for ? I haven’t an- 
swered your question ? I haven’t told you who the ladies are 
who are coming to grace and beautify my poor abode on the 
night after to-morrow night ? Do I visit any other ladies than 
the ladies up at the Hall ? No ? Are any ladies likely to visit 
me than Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter ? Get me my supper 
while I’m in the mind for it, or I shall go to bed without.” 

Despite this threat, the house-keeper lingered. “ Miss Rosa- 
lind Kavanagh is a well-looking young lady, in most people’s 
opinions?” she interrogated, obstinately harking back to the la- 
dies up at the Hall. 

“Most people are to be congratulated upon their discrimina- 
tion,” snapped Hoell. “ Call the Venus of Milo a comely young 
woman, and suppose Helen of Troy to have been, on the whole, 
a presentable sort of body, and then you’ll have an excuse for ap- 
plying the epithet ‘ well-looking ’ to Miss Rosalind Kavanagh.” 

“ I don’t know anything about Venus or the other one,” an- 
swered the woman, doggedly; “they’re nothing to me — or to 
you. You’re not sweet on either; you’re not breaking your 
heart about one or the other of them, my darling !” 

He made her no response in words. Standing where she 
stood, his face was hidden from her. But as she uttered those 
last words she saw him wince and shrink as though some sharper 
bodily pang than usual had seized him, and the veins upon his 
thin, hands start into prominence as he tightened his grasp upon 
the elbows of his chair. 

“ What maggot have you got into your head this time. Mother 


120 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


Endor?” he said, with the ghost of his old whimsical manner, 
and the ghost of his old mocking tone. “ What mare’s-nest have 
you hunted up now — with an addled egg in it? Come, I’m in a 
good-humor to-night ; I’ll please you, and amuse myself by fall- 
ing in with the joke, and making believe, as the children say. 
Suppose I am breaking my heart about a lady, what then ? — and 
how the devil did you come to find it out ?” 

“ I have eyes, my darling. I have ears. I w-asn’t always old 
and ugly, as I am now. Brown as I was, I was handsome enough 
when I was young. I have seen men dying of love in my time,” 
said Pleasant Weather, “ and dying of love for me !” She stepped 
round in front of Hoell’s chair, and fixed her glittering black eyes 
on his ; she pointed at him with one lean, brown finger, and ges- 
ticulated with the mien and air of a pythoness, as she continued: 
“Not only common men, look you, my darling ! gentlefolks, with 
good blood running in their veins, as good as ran in your own fa- 
ther’s, and good money, jingling in their pockets, as good as ever he 
spent or gave away. My wish and spell I put upon ’em, one and 
all, because the sport of seeing the soft looks they cast, and hear- 
ing the fine words they said, and making ’em hate one another, 
for my sake, was noble sport to me. And when a woman puts 
her wish and spell upon a man, master, she draws the light out 
of his eyes, and the soul out of his breast, and the blood out of 
his veins, little by little, into her own ; and the wearier he do 
grow, the gayer she, and the heavier and slower Ids step, the 
lighter hers ; ’cause it’s meat and drink to her, Gentile or gypsy, 
and silver and gold, to see him suffer, and to know the reason 
why.” She struck her hands together passionately. “ Have I 
seen the like of this happen so often that I don’t know the signs 
of it now ? When I see yon sit and sit, thinking and thinking, 
my darling, and sometimes smile and sometimes sigh, or stretch 
your poor hand out — so — as if ’twas to be touching a cheek or 
hand you dreamed was nigh and by, am I no wiser than I was 
before ? When I see you painting your pictures, or making your 
calculations, master, that you’re not to be disturbed over — when 
I lie awake o’ nights, and hear your crutches thump, thump, 
thumping up and down-^” 

She stopped abruptly. For Hoell was lying luxuriously back 
in his comfortable cushioned chair, with a smile of rapturous en- 
joyment on his wizened little face, and beatific wrinkles pucker- 


PLEASANT WEATHER. 


121 


ing the corners of his closed eyelids. “ Go on, go on !” he said, 
dreamily. “ When you hear me walking up and down, night after 
night, what do you think ? What do you say ? Do you say to 
yourself: ‘My master’s in love?”’ He opened his eyes and closed 
them again, and heaved a sigh of unutterable contentment, like a 
child’s. “In love” he repeated. “In love. Oh, the beautiful 
word — the soft, delicious word ! Say it as I say it. ‘ My mas- 
ter’s in love !’ ” 

“ ‘ My master’s in love,’ ” repeated Pleasant Weather. “ And 
who’s Miss Rosalind Kavanagh that my master should weary his 
life out because of her? What’s Miss Rosalind Kavanagh that 
my master should spend dreary days and restless nights along of 
such as she ?” 

Hoell opened his eyes suddenly and sat upright. He looked 
all Pleasant Weather, and then turned his face away from the 
light, towards the most sombre corner of the room. He partly 
shaded it with his hand, as he laughed to himself cunningly 
and quietly, and with such intense enjoyment of the house-keep- 
er’s mistake that he was forced to control his twitching lips with 
his fingers as he looked at her again. “So it’s Miss Rosalind 
Kavanagh I’m dying for ?” he said. “ Mother Endor’s right ; 
there is no keeping a secret from her! And I’m letting the 
worm Concealment prey upon my damask cheek, because I’m 
afraid that, being a lively young lady, as well as a charming 
young lady, who only celebrated her nineteenth birthday the 
other day, that she wouldn’t have me if I asked her. Is that 
it ?” 

“ She not have you ?” the house-keeper repeated, contemptu- 
ously. “ I know better, master, I know better. Why ? Be- 
cause I’m a female myself, Christianly speaking, and I don’t 
look at a young girl in the outrageous way of mankind. Be- 
cause she hangs high up, looking ripe and modest and rosy- 
cheeked, says you in your foolishness — for which who shall blame 
you, being born to it — ‘ Out of reach. Not for me 1’ and looks 
as blank as an empty hen-roost. But shake the tree, master, 
ever so little, and ten to one on it but she tumbles, plump ! into 
your mouth, ready to melt away upon your lips with pure long- 
ing, for all her bashful looks. Take comfort, deary !” she went 
on, losing sight of her jealousy in her eagerness to repudiate 
her master’s implied slight upon his own powers of fascination. 


122 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ She’s for you, as much as any other woman in the world, if 
you have a mind to her.” 

All the pitiable vanity inherent in Hoell’s nature rose smirk- 
ingly to the surface as he listened to the house-keeper’s words. 
He basked in her coarse flattery as complacently as he had re- 
velled in her mistaken suspicions of a moment ago. “ So you 
think I’ve got as good a chance of winning a rich young beauty 
for my wife as the biggest and most muscular man alive? So 
you think I’m not to be resisted when I lay siege to Miss Rosa- 
lind Kavanagh’s afitections ? You good creature ! You’re too 
partial. Weather, you’re too partial. Besides, somebody else has 
been before me. There’s another lover in the orchard already, 
to follow out your simile. He has got a stronger arm than I 
have to shake the tree with, and a bigger mouth to catch the 
pear in when it comes down. Oh, dear, dear ! And so, though 
I should like to stand in the bridegroom’s shoes, Mother Endor, 
I shall have to content myself with those of the best man, un- 
less I am very much mistaken.” 

The levity, the mockery of his tone, were lost upon the house- 
keeper’s earnestness as rain is lost and leaves no trace behind in 
falling upon the sea. She bent over the back of his chair and 
put her lips close to his ear. “ Tell us the other one’s name, 
master, tell us who’s the lucky lover, the bridegroom that’s to 
be !” Hoell looked hard at her with simulated melancholy, and 
shook his sandy little head in affected reproach. 

“ Young or old, the women are all alike. Let them but scent 
a marriage and away they go in full cry. Off with you to Sir 
Philip Lidyard’s wedding, like the rest of the pack. Mother En- 
dor. On second thoughts I won’t be best man. I should have to 
return thanks for the ladies at the wedding-breakfast, and in the 
probable state of my feelings on that occasion I wouldn’t an- 
swer for what might happen. I’ll stay at home and wear the 
willow, Endor. I’m not at all sure that I sha’n’t hang, or drown, 
or shoot myself, unless something happens between this and the 
wedding-day.” He put his handkerchief to his face and moaned, 
and twinkled at her whimsic|illy from behind it with his little 
sandy-brown eyes. But the sense of humor in the house-keeper’s 
organization was a sense left out. The poor pretence, the trans- 
parent affectation of despondency that might hardly have de- 
ceived a child, deceived her. 


PLEASANT WEATHER. 


123 


“ Heart up, master,” she said. “ Strange things come to pass ; 
there’s no knowing but something might happen between this and 
the wedding-day.” 

“ The lovers might quarrel,” suggested Hoell, pursuing the fee- 
ble joke with the pertinacity that was his prevailing characteristic. 
“ She might get tired of him and tell him so, or he might die. 
Who knows?” 

“ Right,” cried Pleasant Weather. “ Never say die, master, be- 
cause he might. Younger, stronger, stouter men than him drop 
off day by day. And then comes you along in your beautiful 
coat, with a flower in your button-hole, and your handkerchief 
smelling of scent, looking this way and that for a wife. ‘ I can 
show you how to comfort a girl for her dead sweetheart,’ says you 
to her folk ; ‘ give her a live one instead ! Take me !’ ” She 
clapped her hands together as she spoke, and burst into another 
peal of mirthless laughter. 

“ ‘ Take me,’ ” repeated Hoell. “ All very well ; but the old 
gentleman with the scythe has got to take the other one before I 
can say that — and our friend at the Chase comes of a long-lived 
stock. Mother Endor.” 

“ Shall I tell you a story, master ?” said Pleasant. “ Come, you 
said you were in a good-humor a little while ago. When you 
were in a good-humor in the old days you used to creep to my 
knee, that you scarcely reached to, standing upright, and beg for 
one. Listen to my story, darling; it’ll not take long.” 

“You’re madder than usual to-night, Endor,” returned Hoell ; 
“ but as you’ve set your mind on it, you may tell your story, pro- 
vided it lasts no longer than the cigarette I’m going to smoke.” 
He took a cigarette from a gayly-embroidered case and lighted it 
at a spill the house-keeper held for him. As the end of the little 
paper tube glowed crimson in response to his indrawn breath — 
as the flrst spiral wreath of fragrant blue vapor ascended. Pleasant 
Weather began her story. 


124 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER IV. 

PLEASANT TELLS A STORY. 

My story, master, begins when I was little, and lived in a cot- 
tage at the village end with my mother. My father I seldom saw. 
He was head game-keeper at the Chase, and I misremember his 
name by now, as I always went by my mother’s. A Cooper she 
was, and came of certain folk who walk about among the north- 
ern counties, and who never forgave her for running away with 
my father ; nor did she forgive him for luring her into taking up 
with him, and learning of him to read and write, which are arts 
abominated by the Romanies ; and afterwards marrying of him 
Christianly. So he went his way, finding the house too hot to 
hold him after the love-fit had passed off, and she would have 
gone to her people, but they would have none of her. So she 
stayed in the village, and kept herself and me by her own earn- 
ings, for of my father’s money she would not take. Skewers she 
made, and baskets ; and what with telling fortunes on the sly — 
for she had a rare gift that way — and knowing the uses of herbs 
in curing complaints in men and beasts, we wanted for nothing. 

“ Now about the time my father died — for he was found dead 
and swollen in his game-keeper’s lodge one morning, having eaten 
something in a stew of mushrooms which had disagreed with him 
— I was growing tall and strong, and a true Cooper in temper as 
well as in looks, ‘ which is well for you, daughter,’ my bebee said 
— for she had taught me to speak to her after the manner of her 
people — ‘ or you should have gone packing to your Gentile of a 
father long ago.’ And I began to pry about, and to put this and 
that together ; for it seemed to me it would be a grand thing to 
kno.w as much as my mother knew, and to be fehred as she was 
feared by the ignorant people round us. But she would tell me 
little, if anything, and bade me be content with the knowledge I 
had, in the way of skewer and basket making ; for though I had 
the look of her people, and the temper of her people, I had blood 
running through my veins that was not theirs, and it was not fit 


PLEASANT TELLS A STORY. 


125 


that I should learn their secrets. But I made up my mind to have 
my will sooner or later. 

“ There was a mill standing where a heap of ruins stands now, 
master, about a mile from Ketton Village ; and the miller’s wife 
was a buxom young woman and high-spirited, and she had mar- 
ried the miller for money, not love — he being a gray-headed man 
who had buried a wife already — and as time flowed on he got to 
know this and taunted her with it, and other things besides ; for 
his foreman had courted her before marriage, and ’twas said there 
was more kindness between ’em still than should be between mar- 
ried wife and bachelor. 

“ And one late noon in autumn, when the leaves were falling and 
the setting sun burned behind naked branches like a raging Are, 
a knock came at our door and, lo ! the miller’s wife followed close 
upon it. ‘You don’t know me,’ she says to my bebee. ‘Make 
not too sure of that,’ my bebee says. ‘ I knows more than I gets 
credit for.’ ‘So I hear, or should I stand where I do now? 
Send the girl away’ — that was me, ray darling — ‘ and let me speak 
to you.’ They sends the girl into the sleeping-room beyond, but 
she claps her ear to a crack in the door and listens. When I 
hears as how the miller’s foreman be down-lying with a fever pre- 
vailing in these parts of damp seasons, and as how the doctor 
had given him up. And ‘ I can’t let him die,’ says the miller’s 
wife. ‘ Simples are of use sometimes when doctors’ drugs fail. 
Help me — help him, for the love of God, and you shall be better 
paid than ever you were in your life before.’ ‘ For the love of the 
good money I’ll do what I may,’ my bebee says. ‘ Go you away 
now, and come at this time to-morrow.’ And she goes. Then my 
bebee opens the door of the sleeping-room and calls to me, and I 
gets her shawl, and takes a fork and a basket according to her di- 
rections, and we goes out together. And as we goes — for her 
eyes were not as good as they used to be — which came of living 
between four brick walls, which no true daughter of the Egyp- 
tians was ever meant to do, and breathing air that was only fit for 
Christians to swallow, as she used to say — she tells me what to 
look for, and where ’tis most likely to be found growing. And 
I says to myself, ‘ This is the beginning.’ And on a bit of wild 
waste land, a mile or two from the sea, after a deal of seeking, ’tis 
found, sure enough. And I digs it up with my fork, careful, so 
as not to bleed the root, which is for all the world like a parsnip. 


126 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


and the leaf as resembling to wild cbiccory as may be. And we 
sets onr faces homeward, and when I has my supper to bed I 
must go. But my bebee sits over the fire all night long and 
watches a pot upon the simmer. And in the morning, before she 
touches bit or sup, it is ‘ Child, find me a bottle — thick glass, 
and of a dark color, or it is no good at all.’ And I begs one from 
a neighbor, not saying but ’tis to hold hartshorn, or such like, for 
my bebee’s rheumatism. And when the dark-blue bottle is 
washed and rinsed, ’tis ‘ Child, run and fetch in some taters from 
the garden and when I comes back with the taters the saucepan 
is gone, and leaves, and whatnot, together with the cloth that was 
used to strain the liquor, are burning on the fire ; and the blue- 
glass bottle, filled and corked up tightly, stands on the table, shin- 
ing in the sun. At that my curiosity burns up brightly, and 
‘ What do you call it, bebee?’ I says; ‘and what is it good for?’ 
meaning the medicine. ‘ I calls it Life-and-Death, Kill-and-Cure,’ 
my bebee answers; ‘and it’s good for either.’ 

“ That night the miller’s wife comes, and she takes away with 
her, in a pint jug tightly tied over with a cloth, some oaten grit- 
water of my bebee’s making. The charm that was said over it 
makes it different to other sick drinks of the kind ; and ’tis to be 
taken, little by little, hour by hour, till the fever ’bates, which it 
must do by nightfall of the next day or the miller’s foreman is 
marked for a dead man. And the miller’s wife takes the grit- 
water, and pays my bebee in silver, and goes her ways. And the 
blue-glass bottle is hidden away, but some part of the stuff it 
holds has been mixed with the drink meant for the sick man, I 
knows full well. And, sure enough, by nightfall of the next day 
he is out of danger, and scarcely a fortnight goes by before he is 
at work again in his old place at the mill. 

“But from that day thenceforth ’tis cast about the village, 
here and there, that the miller and his young wife agree worse 
than ever, and that from hard words it has come to hard blows 
more than once between ’em. But little enough we cares about 
village gossip, having enough to do with our own affairs, ray 
bebee and I. Till late one evening in winter-time, between the 
lights, a woman wrapped in a shawl walks in without any' pre- 
amble, and says to my bebee, ‘ Send the girl to bed — I want to 
speak to you.’ Remembering the voice for that of the miller’s 
wife, though the face, of which I catches a glimpse between the 


PLEASANT TELLS A STORY. 


127 


folds of the shawl, might well have passed for a stranger’s, by 
reason of its whiteness and the strange look in the eyes, even 
without the mark of a disfiguring bruise upon the cheek, I goes 
as far as the other side of the door, master, and no farther. But 
as for what was said, I heard nothing of it but a whisper here 
and a whisper there of risk and danger on my bebee’s part, and 
of pleading and bribery on that of the miller’s wife. Then, 
having previously slipped my clothes ofiF, and hearing my bebee 
coming, I whips into bed and am asleep sounder than a hedge- 
hog when she comes in. So cunning I lies, and subdues my 
countenance, that the candle-flame, passing over my very eyelids, 
never brings as much as a quiver into them, and my bebee goes 
to a hiding-hole I had never found out before, made like a little 
drawer in the head of the wooden bed-frame, and takes out 
something that gleams blue in the candle-light, and goes back to 
the miller’s wife. A gurgling then I hears, as of liquid pouring 
into another bottle, and a chinking of money; presently the door 
opens and shuts, and my bebee comes to bed, and when the bot- 
tle of Life-and-Death goes back to the hiding-hole, it lies in a 
rich nest of golden sovereigns, new from the mint. 

“And behold you! the next sun as ever sets upon us brings 
strange news. The miller has died all of a sudden in a fit of 
giddiness brought on by heating his blood overmuch in a pas- 
sage of high words with his wife. Coroner’s inquest and doc- 
tor’s certificates proves no more and comes to no less; and in six 
months the miller’s widow marries the smart young foreman, and 
a silver teapot stands on the shelf of my bebee’s cupboard; and 
hangs on the hook in the press a purple-satin gown, fit wearing 
for the wife of Pharaoh. What do you think of my story, mas- 
ter?” 

“‘What do I think of the story?’ I think,” said Hoell, 
throwing away the stump of the smoked-out cigarette, “ that 
your miller’s wife was a murderous hussy, and deserves to have 
her portrait handed down to posterity in my collection.” He 
waved his hand towards the velvet case of miniatures hanging 
on the wall. “ And I think that your mother died in the wrong 
place, supposing her to have died in her bed — ” 

“Which she did,” the house-keeper interrupted. “Her sticks 
and bits of things came to me when she was gone, and by your 
father’s leave I housed ’em here, having shifted my quarters 


128 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


from the little homing-place to the great dwelling some years 
before, finding a high roof the more agreeable shelter for my 
pride — I was proud in those days I Some of the things I keeps 
about me to this day. I sleep on the bedstead that my bebee 
slept on, every night. I shall die on it as she did, I suppose, 
when my time comes.” 

“ Haven’t we got to the end of the story, Hecate ?” 

“Patience a moment longer, master, and I’m done. . You’ve 
not asked me whether I found anything in the hiding-hole in 
the bed of my old bebee’s bed-frame after she was put away. 
Yet I did find something there. Can you guess what it was?” 

“ Money that your old magpie of a mother had hidden away ?” 
Hoell suggested, with an evident lack of interest in the sub- 
ject. 

“ Money, and more than money,” said Pleasant Weather. “A 
blue-glass bottle, empty and dry, and with it a paper, written in 
a language I understood. My bebee must have been doubtful 
that her memory might fail her one day, and so wrote down in 
’Gyptian words, if spelled with Gentile letters, the secret way of 
making more of the good stuff to fill it with when needful. The 
secret that put life and death into my hands, master. Life for 
any one I loved, supposing him to be taken as the miller’s fore- 
man was taken. Death for any one that should stand in my way, 
or his (as the miller stood in the way of his wife), to court re- 
venge or to threaten danger, or to baulk him of his wish. My 
story is ended, master. Now do you know why I have told it to 
you?” 

“You hag!” burst out Hoell, as the woman’s intensely black 
eyes, their shallow, glossy surface broken by shifting, evil lights, 
confronted and held his own, as her lean, brown hand closed 
upon his sleeve, and her cold breath fluttered at his ear, “ I be- 
lieve I do!” He pushed her away from him, and surveyed her 
with a glance in which disgust was mingled with a cynical 
amusement. “Your idea of humor is a peculiar one, Mrs. 
Weather. I’ve heard you say some queer things before this 
when you were in one of your bedlam moods. But you’re not 
joking now. You’re in earnest — in dangerous, unpleasant ear- 
nest. You’re not to be trusted, ma’am, and in case you should be 
taking it into your head to try any experiments on your own ac- 
count or on mine, with that precious family prescription of 


PLEASANT TELLS A STORY. 


129 


yours, go and fetch it. Go and fetch the paper you’ve been 
hoarding. I’ll see that it’s put in a safe place for keeping. Go 
and fetch it, do you hear?” 

“ Don’t take it from me, master !” 

“ Go and fetch it !” 

“ Let me keep it by me, darling, for the sake of the old days 
when it was my only comfort. Sat beside your bedside, I did, 
night and day, day and night, and listened to you a-groaning. 
And when the pain was less cruel to bear and you able for talk- 
ing a bit, it would be: ‘My own darling, tell me again. What 
was he like, the boy who did it?’ Says you: ‘ Tall and stout and 
heavy, with red hair and a fresh color, and the other boys called 
him Butcher.’ Then I creeps away and has a peep at — you 
know what. Thinks I, ‘ There’s one a-walking the earth now 
that you shall help me to be revenged on one of these here days.’ 
‘ Tall and stout and heavy, red-haired, and known by the name 
of Butcher.’ Something tells me — something that never erred 
before — that though his way and mine lies far apart, they’re 
bound to meet at last. Much land he shall travel and much 
water cross, high fortune and poor luck attend him, turn and 
turn about, but the thread that guides him shall draw him back 
to me before the end. There’s no hope, no help for it ! And 
from time to time, as the years ran by, I puts the same question 
to you : ‘ What was he like, the boy — now the man — who did 
it ?’ And you always makes me the same answer, till one time 
— about a year after the new mistress came to the Hall — it 
comes different. ‘ Dead. Died abroad, over seas, and speak you 
his name to me never no more. For my anger and bitter re- 
membrance of the injury he did me lies buried in his grave.’ ” 

“ ‘ For my anger apd bitter remembrance of the injury he did 
me lie buried in his grave,’ repeated Hoell. “ Well, let them rest 
there. Go and fetch the paper.” 

“ If I must I must, I suppose. You’re quite sure ke^s dead, 
darling ?” 

“ As sure as I am lihat I’m in love with the young lady up at 
the Hall.” 

“ Strange ! I’ve had a feeling on me lately as if something 
were drawing nigher and nigher to me (some one — who, I don’t 
know) every day. I’ve sat up in my bed o’ nights and lis- 
tened, for it seems as if the footsteps were coming so close to 

9 


130 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


me that I must hear them ere long. ‘ Keep off,’ I says, ‘ for your 
own sake ! What grudge do I owe you, stranger as you be V 
But they keep on coming nearer, and no warning from ray lips 
or any other’s ’ll turn ’em aside. They’re coming now, master, 
on to their appointed end, and what that is who shall say ? 
Don’t frown and bite your lips; I’m going to fetch the paper.” 

She brought the hoarded scrap after the absence of some min- 
utes, and Hoell took it, with a grimace of fastidious disgust at 
its age and griminess, twisted it deliberately spill-wise, and mo- 
tioned her to bring one of the candles from the table to his 
side. 

“ Are you going to burn the paper, darling ?” 

“ I told you I would put it in a safe place. Mother Endor, and 
I’m carrying out my word. The back of the fire-grate — suppos- 
ing the fire to be lighted — is the best strong-box for documents 
of this kind. It flares, now I’ve set fire to it, and sputters. That 
comes of the gallows-grease it has been smeared with. Kow the 
sparks, like impudent little devils, fly up the chimney, one after 
another : Cob, Mob, Chittabob, and the rest of ’em, treading on 
each other’s tails. Nothing but ashes left, you see.” 

“ Nothing but ashes. Let it go ; there are other ways to help 
you to your wish than that way, master ; other secrets than my 
old bebee’s secret, to be made use of when the time comes. I 
found one out yonder by the Shrieking Pits to-night-— one that may 
be buried but can’t be burned. Hides it in ray bosom, I does, 
and brings it home, not knowing but ’twill be like to come in 
handy one day. For husband’s honor is a keen blade in hands 
that are cunning to use it, and so is lover’s faith, and so is daugh- 
ter’s love ; but the sharpest weapon of all is a wife’s sin. Shall 
I tell you what I know about her?” 

“What you know about her, darling?” 

“ Aye ! what I know about the mistress up at the Hall. What? 
You’re ready to listen now, are you ?” 

She bent over her master and whispered a few sentences rapidly 
in his ear. Short as the communication was, it had a terrible ef- 
fect upon the crippled man. His face changed — became dis- 
torted — the very hair seemed to rise upon his head under the in- 
fluence of the unconquerable rage that seized him. He uttered 
an inarticulate sound, like the cry of some wild beast, and struck 
at the woman furiously with his crutch. 


AT THE HALL. 


131 


“ Liar, liar, liar !” The clammy sweat-drops that broke out upon ^ 
his sallow temples, the foam that started on his lips, showed the 
violence of the passion that strove in him for utterance. 

“ By my God, master, it is true ! May I die a starving dog’s 
death, a rotting sheep’s death, if it ben’t as X say ! And, being 
so, your knowing of it puts power in your hands. ‘ Favor my 
cause with the girl,’ says you, ‘ without much beating about the 
bush, or down to the dust with you and your pride?’ Strike me, 
if you like, darling. You’ll work ofiE your passion so. A blow 
wouldn’t hurt, not to speak of, coming from your hand.” 

“ Out of ray sight or I shall murder you ! Lock the doors and 
send everybody to bed. Let no one come near me to-night ; I 
want to be alone — I want to think. Oh, my heart ! my heart !” 

The wind had risen and clamored loudly round the house, set- 
ting the branches of the tall yews, standing like sentinels on either 
side of the old-fashioned casements that lighted the upper end of 
the room, tapping like muffled fingers against the glass. A va- 
grant gust made its way down the chimney, setting the candles 
guttering and flaring, and stirring the trail of ashes that remained 
upon the clean, white tiles of the fireless hearth with a sound like 
the rustling of a woman’s gown. Huddled up in his arm-chair 
he sat the whole night through — in the numbness of the blow 
that had fallen on him — and never stirred, except to clasp his 
head' about with his hands or to wring them one in another against 
his breast, or made sound, except from time to time in a low, piti- 
ful moaning. So, in his misery, the morning found him — of all 
desolate creatures that the brave sun rose upon surely the most 
desolate and the most forlorn. 




CHAPTER V. 

AT THE HALL. 

When two young people of opposite sexes, who are accustomed 
to breathe the calm, unemotional atmosphere of English country 
life, and who have acknowledgedly found in the mutual inter- 
change of thoughts and opinions, not always consonant or iden- 
tical, the main interest and excitement of their lives— when such 


132 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


a He and such a She have quarrelled in good earnest and are re- 
duced to contemplation of an existence in the present and future, 
to be conducted under distant and separate conditions — then does 
Dulness expand her sable wings over the head of each young sol- 
itary and claim them for her own : walking step by step with them 
in measured paces, hanging leaden weights upon the cogwheels of 
time, and sprinkling showers of megrims and vapors round her, 
like London smuts, until Dignity is fain to gather up her starched 
skirts and depart, leaving the ears of the estranged couple free 
to hearken and hearts to respond to the whisper of the grimly- 
visaged mediatress, inculcating the advisability of a speedy mak- 
ing-up. 

“ But I never will,” Miss Rosalind Kavanagh had repeated on 
the afternoon of the second day’s estrangement. And when a 
young lady makes up her mind that she never will she immedi- 
ately manifests a certain anxiety to test her adamantine resolve 
to the utmost, by bringing it without delay into contact with soft- 
ening influences emanating from the other side. 

Therefore, when wheels were heard grinding upon the gravel be- 
fore the hall door, it was but in the ordinary course of things 
that Miss Kavanagh should be discovered on the point of issuing 
forth, in apparent if not obtrusively high spirits, for a morning 
stroll, with a new novel and a sunshade. But the dog-cart proved 
to be a vehicle belonging to the Hall, and its driver merely a 
groom who had been sent over to the neighboring seaport-town 
to execute some commissions for his mistress. Whereupon the 
idea of an airing was abandoned with the sunshade, and the new- 
est and loveliest of garden-hats ever conceived and executed by a 
London milliner ; the new novel was left sprawling on its stomach 
upon one of the tables in the hall, and Rosalind turned her foot- 
steps towards her step-mother’s room. 

But that proved refuge from solitude or weariness was not to 
be hers to-day ; the solace of sympathy and love never before de- 
nied her was to be denied her now. As she raised her hand to 
knock at the door another hand was laid upon her arm. An el- 
derly maid, Mrs. Kavanagh’s faithful attendant from the earliest 
days of her marriage up to the present, who had been keeping 
watch in the corridor for the purpose of warning off would-be 
intruders, confronted her young lady with an anxious face, and 
elevated a cautioning finger. 


“WHEN LOVE IS YOUNG.’ 


133 


“ My mistress gave particular orders that she was not to be dis- 
turbed, miss. My mistress has had a bad night with her head, 
and seemed quite worn-out this morning. I was to say so, with her 
love, and that you and the master were not to be alarmed, for 
rest and quiet was all she wanted to make her quite well by din- 
ner-time. And most particular the orders were that she was not 
to be disturbed.” 

Too full of affectionate anxiety to regard the woman’s warning, 
Rosalind knocked at the bedroom door and tried the handle. The 
door was locked. She listened. The flapping of a curtain in the 
draught of an open window might simulate to some extent the 
sound of draperies trailing over the carpet, but not the sound of 
unquiet feet pacing to and fro. 

“ She is not lying down, Martin ; I hear her moving about. 
There can be no harm in my seeing and speaking to her only for 
a moment. Mamma, darling, it is only Rosalind. May I not 
come in ?” 

The sound of trailing draperies, the tread of unquiet feet, never 
ceased, but a voice, strangely unlike Mrs. Kavanagh’s, answered 
from within, “No !” 

“ Then let me see you — just a glimpse to make sure you are 
not really ill !” 

The hoarse voice answered “ No ; I want to be by myself — I 
want rest and quiet. Go out^ into the bright sunshine, my love, 
and be happy. Don’t think of me !” 


CHAPTER VI. 

^ “WHEN LOVE IS YOUNG.” 

The draperies swept over the carpet once more, the footsteps 
were heard again — plainly as they passed the door of the bed- 
room, growing fainter as they retreated into the morning-room 
beyond it. That room possessed a door opening into the cor- 
ridor as well as one leading into the drawing-room. Both those 
doors were locked, and double-locked, as the grieved daughter 
turned silently away. 

“ I told you so,” the elderly maid’s expression said as plainly 


134 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


as if she had spoken in words. She shook her head and re- 
sumed her watch in the corridor. Rosalind returned to the hall, 
took up her neglected novel, and tried to read. 

It was a circulating library novel in three volumes, beau- 
tifully bound, and the plot dealt exclusively with a misunder- 
standing between an engaged couple, who parted defiantly in the 
first chapter and were penitentially united in the last — not in 
time to prevent the lady’s hair from being turned prematurely 
white by, as the author phrased it, “ the smiting hand of 
grief.” A sad story, and by the time Rosalind had skipped as 
far as Finis^ and dropped a tear or two over the sufferings of the 
heroine, the sound of the luncheon -gong came as a positive 
relief. 

Neither her father or her uncle made their appearance at the 
meal. The colonel, in the exercise of his functions as a magis- 
trate, had ridden over to attend the quarterly sessions held in 
the neighboring city of Norwich ; his brother had volunteered 
to accompany him the greater part of the way. Rosalind found 
herself, for the first time in her life, sole occupant of the family 
table. Was it possible, even for a healthy young English lady, 
to manifest, under such circumstances, the fine appetite which is 
the national attribute of her countrywomen in the opinion of the 
intelligent foreigner? No! The butler, an old servant, and a 
family man into the bargain, observed the miserable pretence his 
young mistress made of eating, and felt it his duty to expostu- 
late. He brought back a favorite dish which she had sent away 
almost untasted, and begged her, for the sake of his credit with 
the cook (whose temper, he parenthetically observed, was a 
stinger), to try again. The second attempt was as ineffectual as 
the first. Rosalind left the table and went out of the house. 

A bright-eyed collie was sitting on his haunches before the 
hall door. He rose, flamboyant with expectation, and barked 
anticipatively as Rosalind appeared. A silky mop of hair, coiled 
up in the sun a little distance off, woke up and shook out an 
hysterically-yelping skyMerrier. An unregenerate black poodle, 
sorrowfully in want of clipping, and a half-bred foxhound left 
off digging a hole under a tree a little distance off, and con- 
tributed their quota of noise to the general chorus; while two 
white Persian cats — who had been watching the progress of ex- 
cavation in the interests of any field-mouse or beetle who might 


WHEN LOVE IS YOUNG.’ 


135 


happen to have settled in the neighborhood — and a clip-winged 
tame magpie, who had been keeping his eye on the, cats, for 
malevolent reasons of his own — came paddling and fluttering 
over the lawn to take up their accustomed positions on the out- 
skirts of the canine circle. 

“Oh, not to-day, Jock,” Rosalind said sadly to the collie, who, 
with his feathery tan fore-paws laid upon her arm, and his saga- 
cious head cocked upon one side, looked past her into the empty 
hall with a low whine of inquiry ; “ we must go for our walk with- 
out her to-day.” She moved slowly on ; the dogs scampered for- 
ward, yelping joyfully, the cats prepared to follow more sedately, 
while the magpie announced his intention of accompanying them 
in a series of sharp preliminary prod.s. The cortege proceeded a 
little way, then halted in disorder. It became apparent that 
something was wrong. 

A dismal sound came from the direction of the house. Rosa- 
lind looked back and called to the collie. He acknowledged the 
invitation with a faint wag of his tail, and slunk back to his old 
place, a thoroughly miserable dog. With down-drooped ears 
and uplifted nose he sat before the hall door and protested 
against the particular dispensation of Fate which had prevented 
his mistress from taking her usual morning walk, in a series of 
melancholy howls. 

The other dogs wavered, suddenly lost all interest in the pro- 
jected expedition, and turned back. The cats held a short con- 
sultation, which ended in their retracing their steps. The mag- 
pie followed them, on evil thoughts intent. Miss Kavanagh 
found herself alone. “ Even the animals desert me,” she said to 
herself, and the next moment showed her the primal deserter 
(biped) striding across the grass. She received him so frigidly 
that a third person and a keen observer would have suspected 
the dissembling of warmer sentiments ; but Sir Philip Lidyard, 
being a single- visioned as well as a single-hearted young Saxon, 
was visibly chilled and depressed. 

“ How kind of yon to call. Unfortunately, mamma is ill ; 
this is the second day she has kept her room, and I fear you will 
be disappointed at not seeing her.” 

“ Disappointed, certainly, and grieved to hear such news of 
her. But the fact is my visit was intended — I came to see your- 
self in particular.” 


136 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ Delighted ! But how could you desert your friend Mr. 
Hawley ?” 

“ My friend Hawley has gone for a walk. Wanted to renew 
his acquaintance with the scenery of his native country. I 
offered him the dog-cart, but he refused it; his legs wanted 
stretching, he said. So off he went ; and on that, my anxiety — ” 

“To kill time?” y 

“ To see you and set my mind at rest after two days — ” 

“ Spent in more congenial society ?” 

“ Sent me whirring over here like a carrier-pigeon. Said I to 
myself, ‘ She would not say “ good-night ” to me the other night. 
Perhaps she may not entertain the same objection to saying 
“good-afternoon” this afternoon.’ ” 

“ ‘ Good-afternoon,’ then.” 

“ What ! would you send me away when I have only just 
come ? Ah, you like to make a poor fellow wretched. I do be- 
lieve women are more cruel than men. Come, tell me how I 
have offended you — without knowing it, dear Rosalind? Ah, 
you draw yourself up at that, and yet it used to be Rosalind, 
and Linda, and Rose — sweet Rose — not so very long ago, when 
we were boy and girl in Eton jackets and short frocks to- 
gether.” 

“A curious costume. Ha, ha, ha !” 

“ Laugh at mo afterwards as much as you like, only explain 
now. Why am I in disgrace?” 

“ How can I tell ?” 

“ You are cold to me — you are angry with me — and I will 
know why.” 

“Don’t grind your teeth and stamp your foot; it is not be- 
coming. Well, then, I will tell you. When a gentleman hap- 
pens to be in the right and a lady in the wrong — for once — it is 
not nice to triumph over her.” 

“ When were you ever in the wrong?” 

She was soothed by that, and proceeded more mellifluously. 
“ The other day — it seems longer ago— I was unreasonable, ob- 
stinate, and ill-tempered — ” 

“ No, no !” 

“ Indeed, it is true, and you the reverse of all these things, only 
acting delicately and thoughtfully and considerately towards 
poor Mr. Brinnilow in trying to prevent a meeting between him 


WHEN LOVE IS YOUNG.’ 


137 


and your friend. And when the meeting did take place after 
all — through no fault of yours — then I knew that you had been 
in the right and I in the wrong; and that you thought so 
I could read in your eyes, for the eyes are the index of the 
mind and the heart, as somebody says.” 

“ Somebody says wrong, if that is all you read in mine.” 

“ I resolved to beg your pardon, for I knew I had behaved ill ; 
but then you looked as if you knew it, too, and that made a dif- 
ference. For a girl will be truly penitent, and call herself dread- 
ful things, until she finds that — other people — agree with her, 
and then she begins to remember the excuses that might have 
been made for her, and to think herself not so very much to 
blame after all.” 

“ Nor were you, for I did not confide in you as I ought to 
have done. But I could not bear to prejudice you against my 
friend, and — ” 

“ I was very disagreeable.” 

“ You said one or two things that hurt at the time, but do you 
think I would remember them against you? As well owe a dove 
a grudge for pecking at my hand.” 

“ Yet you did not come near — us — for nearly two days !” 

“ Could I help that ? I was obliged to entertain my friend, 
and the days went miserably enough whenever I thought of 
you — ” 

“You do well to qualify the admission, sir.” 

“ And that was always ! Are you not still a little angry with 
me ? Come, confess. Did you not think it a little — strange — 
that when others who — regard you — should make their little of- 
ferings to mark the day that saw the world made brighter for your 
being born into it— I should have come to you with empty 
hands ?” 

“ Not at all. Well, then, yes — a little.” 

“ Yet it was in my pocket all the time, and you were so sur- 
rounded I never got an opportunity of speaking to you alone, so 
there it stayed. Hang the thing ! I had half a mind to pitch it 
away or smash it under my heel — so !” 

“No, no! Not till I have seen what is inside. Cruel! Be- 
sides, it is mine, and people have no right to throw away other 
people’s property. AkT 

The nucleus of an inch-square agglomeration of white paper, 


138 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


string, sealing-wax, card-board and cotton-wool, was a diamond 
and sapphire ring, whose stones, inimitable as to color, size, and 
water, were almost rivalled in lustre by the fair eyes that dwelt 
rapturously upon the lovely trinket. A few years ago and Rosa- 
lind would have openly rewarded the giver with a kiss. If she 
kissed him in her heart on this occasion, who shall wonder? For 
what woman ever resisted jewels, or did not in her heart regard 
the temptation of Margaret as greater than that of Eve ? 

“ So you like it ? Let me put it on your finger. May I ?” 

“ Indeed you shall.” 

“ Aye, but that is not the hand I want. The left hand for me.” 

‘‘ Dear ! How particular you are. There !” 

And Miss Innocence held out the left hand with the index fin- 
ger alone available for girdling purposes, the other pink digits 
being crumpled up in a ball in the middle of the rose-leaf-tinted 
palm. 

“ The proper hand now, but not the proper finger. No. I will 
not have the middle finger, it is too large, and the little finger is 
too small.” For the simple girl had poked them out under his 
nose one after another. “ The third ; that is the one I want.” 

“ The third is the engaged finger. A girl does not wear a ring 
upon the engaged finger — ” 

“Until the man she loves puts it there.” 

“ That is the rule ; but perhaps one may stretch a point to 
oblige an old friend. So put your ring on that finger, if you 
will ; you must not mind his taking it off when he comes, poor 
fellow.” 

At this barbed arrow the young man winced and quivered ; but 
he had taken his courage in both hands, and was not minded to 
drop it yet awhile. 

“ Dearest heart, loveliest Rose, I will put it on, but nobody 
shall ever take it off again except myself, and that will be to 
leave another in its place. Say that you love me as I love you. 
Be my wife, dear, for I worship you — I adore you, my sweet, 
sweet girl !” 

He went on, mixing sentiment and bathos, poetry and prose, 
hopelessly together; but there was the true ring of manly pas- 
sion in his pleading, and she thrilled at it. Out of the abun- 
dance of the heart that loves the mouth stammereth, and your 
earnest wooer is seldom glib of utterance. 


WHEN LOVE IS YOUNG.' 


139 


He took her white finger prisoner with the sparkling circlet, 
and from that moment she was conquered — her coquetry was 
gone. He led her, trembling and submissive, to a rustic bench 
set under the shadow of an ancient cedar, and screened by its 
rugged bole and sheltering branches from the view of the house 
— such seats have been the absolute and acknowledged property^ 
by seisin corporeal and user immemorial, of the great family of 
lovers ever since the world began — and there their lips met, not 
with the kisses of their childish days, yet innocently enough, God 
knows. 

As her head sank upon his shoulder, as her eyes drooped, even 
in the gathering twilight beneath the gaze of his — a noisy out- 
burst of barking from the dogs recalled the pair to consciousness 
of the outer world again. In another moment the collie tore at 
full speed across^ the lawn and vanished among the trees of the 
plantation on the western side of the Hall. The other dogs fol- 
lowed upon his heels in full cry. Two white streaks, rapidly dis- 
appearing in the distance, were barely recognizable as the cats. 
The magpie, unequal for once to the exigencies 6f the occasion, 
remained behind, swearing. 

“ Poor things ! they fancy mamma is coming. They have been 
watching and waiting for her all day. One cannot make even 
Jock understand that she is ill and shut up in her room. Dear 
Philip, I am a selfish girl to have forgotten that, even for an in- 
stant.” She kissed her hand and waved it towards the house, 
with a pretty, tender gesture. “ Ah, it is well you love her, else 
could I ever have given you my heart ! For she and I are one. 
I should dread to break the news to her that we are — of what 
has happened, but that I know you would never wish to part 
us, Philip. See, the dogs are coming back; they have found out 
their mistake by this time. Jock! Jock! come and tell us who 
has been scolding you !” 

Jock came to the call, all drooping and dejected, and laid his 
head resignedly upon Rosalind’s lap. 

“ Are you growing old and blind, my doggie, that you take a 
stranger to be your mistress, even at a little distance away ?” she 
asked, with pretended severity. “ Tell us who it was you fol- 
lowed into the wood? Tell us who spoke harshly to you and 
sent you back again ?” 

But Jock was dumb. 


140 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER VII. 

AT THE SHRIEKING PITS. . 

The person whom the dogs had followed traversed the planta- 
tion by a side path, and, avoiding the western avenue that led to 
the upper lodge gates and out upon the Norwich road, left the 
Hall grounds by a private latch-gate opening in the palings some 
distance higher up. The person whom the dogs had followed 
was a woman : a woman wearing a plain gray cloak of some light 
summer material over a white dress, and having a scarf of black 
lace thrown carelessly over her head. The faithful instinct of the 
collie had not betrayed him. The woman was Mrs. Kavanagh. 

The gate opened into a field — a wide, sloping meadow, with a 
public footway running across it. After a moment’s hesitation 
she followed the narrow path to its termination, and, crossing the 
high stone stile that gave access to a steep lane, squeezed in be- 
tween high banks crowned with hedge-row and skirted with fern, 
turned to the right and went on steadily. 

Her course was an upward one. The steep banks became less 
steep ; the signs of cultivation on either hand became fewer and 
fewer as she proceeded. Soon hedge-row shrubs were replaced by 
tufts of heather or clumps of coarse bracken, seared and dried by 
the autumnal heat. When the lane itself left off, a rickety finger- 
post indicated the narrow track that led onward in its place as 
the way to Yelmerton Common. The common presented itself 
as a wide, up-stretching expanse of sandy moorland, crowned at 
its highest point by the half-obliterated indications of some old 
Roman earthworks and the ruins of a beacon. The path led over 
the hill. 

Before following it, Mrs. Kavanagh hesitated again, and looked 
uneasily about her. The heather was shaken here and there as an 
invisible rabbit bounded across an unseen run, or a stray pheas- 
ant rose whirring into the open. The hum of the late-roaming, 
heather-loving bees, and the chirp of the grasshopper were almost 


AT THE SHRIEKING PITS. 


141 


the only sounds that broke the silence. She climbed the hill with- 
out another pause. 

The ruins of the beacon passed the track then began to incline 
downward. After a hundred yards or so the hill broke suddenly 
away. Standing on the edge of the furze -bordered cliff thus 
formed, at an elevation of some twenty feet from the plateau below, 
sparingly overgrown with scantling vegetation, the attention of the 
guide-accompanied pedestrian was invariably directed to the curi- 
ous excavations with which its sandy area was honey-combed in 
every direction, and his thirst for information as inevitably as- 
suaged by the information — delivered in the broadest of local dia- 
lects : 

“ Them’n be the Shriekin’ Pits.” 

Sepulchral chambers or secret storehouses or abandoned ref- 
uges of some prehistoric race of dwellers in the earth — whatever 
origin or use archaeologic science attributes to them, whatever title 
knowledge or tradition may assign them — the Piets’ houses of the 
Scottish moors — the erd-chambers of the Irish heaths, the Shriek- 
ing Pits of our Norfolk commons are the same. Rudely bur- 
rowed in the soil, their converging sides lined with uncemented 
stones, their roofs of roughly-shapen blocks level with the surface 
of the ground, they present, in every respect, identical character- 
istics, showing that the brains which designed and the hands that 
fashioned them were actuated by a common motive, and the need 
they supplied was a common need. 

It had been twilight in the grounds of the Hall, twilig]^ in the 
meadow and between the high banks of the lane, but here upon 
the heath the day was slow in dying, and in the western sky the 
last embers of the sunset still smouldered behind bars of purplish 
cloud. Upon the northern horizon, beyond the rugged billows 
of moorland that went rolling up to meet it, the faint calm line of 
ocean was visible through a curtain of brooding mist. 

She paused upon the brink of the low cliff before descending 
the path-way that went winding down its face, and looked across 
the sombre distance towards that faint gray line. 

As she did so a light flashed up and faded, and again leaped 
into brightness, and the golden finger of the far-off light-house 
went pointing out to sea. 

With the last glow of sunset still upon her face, she looked 


142 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


downward then. A man was standing on the plateau beneath, 
watching her, waiting for her. He beckoned. 

And she went down to meet him. 

The man was Reginald Hawley. 


CHAPTER VHI. 

CLOSING IN. 

So, even as the dragon’s teeth, sown in the old classic fable, 
quickened and sprang up in the likeness of armed men, to threaten 
and destroy, the buried evil of her past rose up and menaced her 
now. So from the old House of Shadows in the Place du Con- 
gres at Brussels a shadow stretched across the lapse of years and 
fell upon her blackly. 

As she came steadily towards him, over the broken ground, he 
threw away his cigar and slightly raised his hat. Trivial acts of 
courtesy, both commonly due from a gentleman towards a lady, 
but their omission in the present instance would have been less 
insulting than his manner of observing them. 

They stood together now beside the brink of one of the pits, 
from which the flag-stone roofing had been partly stripped away, 
and looked in one another’s faces. In his there was triumph, 
something of cynical amusement, and something, too, of unwill- 
ing admiration. In hers, shame and anguish and despair were 
written, as with a brand. The mental conflict of the past few 
days had accomplished in her what might have l^een the work of 
years. Wasted, like wax in flame, by guilty apprehensions and 
torturing dread, she stood before the man whom Fate had singled 
out to be his own avenger, and met his glance with hers. Even 
with the walls of her stronghold crumbling about her, the ground 
mined beneath her feet, there was no cowardly quailing in her re- 
gard of him. 

‘‘ So you got my letter ? No need to ask the question,” said 
Hawley, “ as you are here.” 

“ I got your letter. Must I tell you again that I risk observa- 
tion — that I imperil my reputation in meeting you like this ?” 

“ Odd !” ejaculated Hawley, not addressing her. “ I have read 


CLOSING IN. 


V 


143 


of an actor who played his part so long and so thoroughly that at 
last he believed himself to be the person he represented. Here’s 
the situation reproduced — and in real life — in the person of an 
adventuress who has sustained the character of a respectable woman 
for twelve years, and who thoroughly believes, now, that she has 
a reputation to lose !” 

“ You sent for me that I might listen to this soliloquy ?” 

“ You’re mistaken. I sent for you because I wanted to ascer- 
tain whether the deliberations of last night have furnished you 
with the answer to a question which, at the risk of being weari- 
some, I’m going to repeat. What do you intend to do ?” 

“ What do I intend to do ?” 

“ With regard to the settlement of the claim which you ac- 
knowledge I have upon you? The discharge of a trifling debt 
which stands — you don’t deny that it stands — between us? The 
exact sum — less twelve years, some odd months’ interest at such 
and such per cent. — a consideration which I have generously 
agreed to forego — amounts, if my memory doesn’t fail me, to ex- 
actly six thousand pounds.” 

“ I have already told you, you shall be paid.” 

“ But how and vvhen ? Mights mere mortal, gifted with an or- 
inary capacity of patience, ask when ?” 

“ Every farthing of money that belongs to me by right shall 
pass into your hands as it passes into mine. More than that I 
cannot say. Don’t drive me too far !” 

“ She might,” said Hawley, throwing back his head, and sup- 
porting his stick behind his broad shoulders in an attitude of 
idle ease, “ she might be said to entertain a rather one-sided view 
of the present situation in asking not to be driven too far.” 

Her bosom heaved under its light covering, but she made no 
reply in words. Only she drew from its troubled resting-place a 
little silken case, and held it to him. 

“ Three hundred pounds,” said Hawley, taking it and running 
through the notes it contained with a careless finger. “ Pre- 
viously offered as a solatium or a bonus, a bribe or an instalment ; 
and rejected — as in the present instance — absolutely.” He 
closed the case and returned it. 

“ Take it, and in a few weeks you shall have as much again. 
The yearly allowance I reeeive from ray — through my marriage 
settlement — ” 


144 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ With a marriage settlement as well as a reputation !” com- 
mented Hawley. “ It is sufficient, as our Parisian neighbors 
would say. You are familiar with the French language — I leave 
you to restore my adapted quotation to its original form.” 

She went on without noticing the interruption. “ My yearly 
allowance amounts to six hundred pounds. It may be possible 
— I believe it is possible — to raise a sum of money, sfecretly, 
upon the deed of settlement, sufficient to discharge your claim. 
I only ask for a little more time in which to make the necessary 
arrangements. x\s to the jewels and other trinkets I possess — ” 

“You were wearing diamonds when I had the honor of being 
introduced to you the other night,” interrupted Hawley. “ And 
in every respect the jewels were worthy of the wearer. They 
should be worth a decent lot of money ?” 

“ I believe they are. But they are heirlooms belonging to 
the family whose name I bear. And I will not rob my husband, 
even to save myself from you.” 

“Supposing it possible for you,” said Hawley, “by any 
breach of conscientious scruples, by any sacrifice of personal 
property or personal pride, by any known means ever resorted 
to by a desperate woman in a desperate strait. — to save yourself 
from me.” 

“ Will nothing satisfy you ?” The menace of his manner, 
the provocation of his tone, had failed to shake her courage or 
disturb her forced composure. But there was a note of anguish 
in her voice now that betrayed itself beyond her mastery, and 
her hands clasped and wrung each other beneath her cloak, as 
he answered : 

“ Nothing will satisfy me but one thing. I’m not a rich man. 
Money means as much to me as it means to others. But it 
weighs as light as thistle-down in the scales when I balance it 
against my revenge on you.” 

She said, hoarsely : “ There are others beside myself who 
merit that. Why revenge yourself on me alone ?” 

“ Because you alone happen to be at hand. Your worthy col- 
league, proprietress of the gambling-hell in which I first had the 
privilege of meeting you, has shown a clean pair of heels up to 
the present, Mrs. Kavanagh.” 

She sighed heavily, and wiped away with her handkerchief 
the perspiration that had begun to gather on her temples and 


CLOSING IN. 


145 


about her lips. She had not entreated to her enemy till now, 
and the entreaty came as though it had been wrenched from 
her. “ Have a little mercy,” she burst out, “ upon a woman 
who has wronged you, and who repents of it! Let the memory 
of your mother, if you remember her and love her, plead with 
you for me, and ” — her voice broke and faltered — “ and for 
others,” were the words that died upon her lips. 

“ You do well to name my mother to me,” said Hawley, bit- 
terly. “ My mother died in England on the night on which I 
was robbed in Brussels. Robbed, not alone of money, but of 
my last remaining chance in life. Look at me, and tell me 
whether I am likely to have mercy on the thief, now that I have 
caught her ?” 

She looked at him, and there was no relenting in the glance 
that met her own. She repeated his own words after him me- 
chanically. “ I think that you will have no mercy on the thief, 
now that you have caught her!” Life and expression faded out 
of her face ; she looked as she had looked on the night of their 
meeting. Her head drooped upon her bosom ; she gathered her 
cloak about her and turned to go. 

“ Stop !” said Hawley. Have you nothing more to say to me ?” 

She returned, doggedly, without looking at him, “ I have 
notj^ing more to say to you.” 

“ Then I have something to say to you before we part. Don’t 
entertain the idea of running away and so escaping me, because 
such an idea does injustice to your cleverness — and you are a 
clever woman. If I were not sure of you should I have left 
that money in your possession? Hide from me in England, 
hide from me abroad, you won’t hide long before my hand lets 
in the light upon you in your lurking-hole. Twenty-four hours 
will not have gone over before you find me following upon your 
heels.” 

“ Boast as you choose,” she answered, “ there is one hiding- 
place where I shall be safe from you — there is one refuge to 
which you daren’t follow me.” 

His eyes followed the direction of her finger as it pointed to 
the ground ; his inward conviction told him that the words were 
spoken in terrible earnest. 

“Do you mean,” he said, “that you are desperate enough 
and brave enough to kill yourself?” 

10 


146 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ I am desperate enough and brave enough to kill myself 

“ Do it then !” said Hawley. “ Hide from disgrace and ex- 
posure in the grave, if you like. Others are left behind to suffer 
m your stead ; others may feel the shame that you are past feel- 
ing and bear the punishment that you are past bearing. Have 
you forgotten that?” 

“ No, no ! Oh, for God’s sake ! — ” 

The great deeps of the guilty woman’s agony and remorse 
were broken up as she uttered that piercing cry. She stretched 
out her hands towards her accuser and clasped them in wild en- 
treaty — she would have kneeled to him if he had not prevented 
her. 

“ Listen to me ! — let me speak to you ! — let me kneel — not 
on my own behalf, but in theirs ! My punishment is just ; I am 
ready to expiate, as shamefully and as bitterly as you will, the 
wrong I did you in the past. But spare them ! They never 
harmed you ! You can’t understand, all undeserving, all vile as 
you know me to be, how they love me! You don’t know the 
ruin, the misery, you could bring upon them, almost with a 
word ; you don’t know what hearts those are that you could 
break to-morrow, if you chose. Oh, for God’s sake, spare my 
husband and my daughter!” 

“ Spotless wife, admirable step-mother, acknowledged queen of 
a county’s society,” said Hawley, “ I think the time has come when 
the imposture must end and the impostor be exposed — strictly 
in the interests of the community at large. You have reached 
the end of your tether, in a word ; and you ought not to com- 
plain, because it has been long enough. Go home now to your 
husband and your daughter, and your admiring circle of acquaint- 
ances, and remember — excuse the Scriptural quotation — that you 
know neither the day nor the hour when your punishment is 
coming, but that it will come, most certainly ! Do nothing rash, 
lest you should hasten the inevitable crisis. And if I should 
take a fancy to maintain, for some little time, the footing of a 
visitor in the household — which lam sure you manage with 
grace and discretion, and all that sort of thing — be good enough 
to accept the situation. Do you hear?” 

“ I hear,” Mrs. Kavanagh answered, sullenly. She had risen 
to her feet and regained her self-control — outwardly, at least. 
“ And suppose I refuse to endure the hourly, daily torture you 


CLOSING IN. 


147 


mean to inflict upon me with your presence under the honorable 
roof that never sheltered shame until it sheltered me? Sup- 
pose I say, ‘ Strike now, and end my misery, or I will V What 
then ?” 

“ * What then V Why, I answer,” returned Hawley, “ that I’ll 
strike when I please. To-morrow, or a week hence, or a year 
from now, according to my humor. And as to your taking 
the initiative, and bringing the walls about your own ears, by 
way of being beforehand with me, you daren’t do it.” 

Her heart confirmed him if her lips did not. She dared not 
do it ! 

“ So you had best give in quietly to my whim — if it is a whim,” 
said Hawley, “ without more heroics. What’s that ?” 

He started round upon his heel as a little loose soil, dislodged 
from the sandy brink of the low cliff that rose behind him, slip- 
ped down its crumbling face with a rustling noise.. 

“ Nothing,” she said, wearily. “ A rabbit or a bird, perhaps. 
This place is solitary — this place is avoided, after twilight, by 
the village people.” 

“All right,” rejoined Hawley. “Perhaps it was a rabbit or a 
bird, as you say. I have got nothing to hide. not afraid 

of listeners. People don’t suspect you yet; there’s no reason 
to suppose that anybody could have followed you, creeping and 
dodging and slinking out of sight, all the way from the Hall.” 
He looked at his watch. “ Nearly eight o’clock. If you don’t 
hurry back now you’ll be late for dinner ; they will be wonder- 
ing where you are. Best to keep up appearances, you know, 
until there’s no need to keep ’em up any longer. Remember, 
I’m to dine with you to-morrow night ; your husband asked me, 
and you confirmed the invitation. Queer, all things considered, 
that I should be a guest at your table — but I like queer situa- 
tions. Come, I’m in a more agreeable humor now I’ve had my 
say. I’ve frightened you — you’re white and trembling. Shall 
I see you part of the way home ? No ? Safer not, perhaps — 
safer not.” 

Once more he removed his hat with a courtesy as intolerable 
as that.,he had exhibited before. He adjusted it on his head ; 
he thrust one big hand into the pocket of his loose tweed coat, 
and walked away from her, carelessly swinging his walking-stick 
and whistling a tune. 


148 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER IX. 

MORE SHADOWS. 

Mrs. Kavanagh retraced her steps to the Hall in the gath- 
ering darkness. Thanks to its friendly cover, she was able to 
cross the paddock and stable-yard, to traverse the garden, and 
finally reach her own room by one of the glass doors that opened 
on the terrace, unobserved. 

She appeared in her usual place at the dinner-table that even- 
ing. Perhaps her courage and composure had never been so 
severely tested, her tortured heart had never been so sorely 
wrung, as when she was called upon to meet the glad welcome 
of the familiar looks that awaited her there ; to respond to the 
affectionate solicitude that manifested itself in inquiries after 
her health, with her ordinary manner and tone. 

Rosalind slipped an arm in hers as they entered the drawing- 
room together. The time had come to disclose the only secret 
the daughter had ever kept from her mother ; to impart to that 
truest friend and counsellor the plot of the little love-drama, 
which had played itself out under the beeches on that happy 
afternoon, to its happy ending. As Mrs. Kavanagh moved, with- 
out pausing by her favorite chair or her favorite flowers, with- 
out responding to the ingratiating advances of the Persian cats 
or the affectionate demonstrations of Jock, the collie, to the 
door of her private room, and turned to bid her good - night 
upon the threshold, Rosalind, with all a spoiled child’s assurance 
of immunity from rebuke or impulse, followed her across it, and 
delayed the leave-taking. 

“No, no! not good -night yet! Consider how little I have 
seen of you for the last two days, and how lonely I have been 
without you. I nevet make your head worse, when it aches, by 
talking — you have said so over and over again. Let me stay a 
little while, darling, and talk to you now.” 

She pushed a low-cushioned chair to an opei\wdndow ; she in- 
vited Mrs. Kavanagh to sit in it with a look and a kiss — and 


MOKE SHADOWS. 


149 


settled down on a low stool at her side. It was a still, warm night ; 
not a sound broke the quiet of the shadowed garden except the 
twitter of some restless bird, or the tap upon the window-glass 
made by the heavy body of some clumsy-winged summer in- 
sect, as it flew towards the light of the shaded lamp that softly 
illuminated the room. 

Rosalind leaned her head luxuriously back against her moth- 
er’s shoulder and closed her eyes. The attitude was favorable 
to deliberation ; she was at that moment endeavoring to select, 
out of half a dozen different methods that presented themselves 
to her, the easiest way of breaking the news. 

“ Leave it till to-morrow,” her heart whispered. “ Why give 
pain to the one whose claim upon your love and devotion is 
stronger even than his — before you actually need ? Why not be 
happy in the old, peaceful, quiet way, for one more night ?” 

Happy ! If she had known the tumult raging in the breast 
against which she leaned her head, busy with its own fancies! 
Peaceful I If she had known how that peace was menaced ! 
But she did not. 

“ Philip was here to-day,” she began, in spite of all her elab- 
orate mental preparations making, the announcement rather 
abruptly. 

Mrs. Kavanagh responded, “I thought so. I thought I heard 
your voices in the garden, my love.” 

Rosalind put out another feeler. “ Do you know, darling, I 
think — though Philip was always nice, of course — that he is im- 
proved of late. He has grown so manly and so strong ; and his 
nature is as sincere as his heart is generous, I do believe. He 
would be kind and helpful to any one in trouble — any one who 
was in danger or distress might safely trust him, I feel sure. 
What was it, darling ? Did anything startle you 

Mrs. Kavanagh stirred, and sat upright in her chair. She me- 
chanically repeated her daughter’s words : “ ‘ Any one who was 
in danger or distress might safely trust him.’ ” Her oppressed 
heart beat m^pre freely ; the blood began to circulate more quick- 
ly through' her veins. “Suppose / were to trust him?” was her 
unspoken thought. “ Would he help 

“ He was so sorry to hear that you had a headache,” Rosa- 
lind continued. “ He is so fond of you, dear. I believe — if it 
could possibly be — that he is almost as fond of you as ” — 


150 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“As he is of my daughter,” the weary woman said, touching 
the soft cheek. That cheek, with its fellow, grew suddenly 
crimson, as Rosalind jumped up, and, turning down the lamp, 
which flared up, just then, conveniently, came back to Mrs. Kav- 
anagh’s side. “ It is so much pleasanter in the dark,” she said. 
“ Mamma, I feel curiously young and small to-night, in spite of 
my nineteen years. May I sit on your lap as I used when I was 
a child? May I” — she took the old place without ending her 
sentence — “ may I tease you with questions as I used to in the 
old days ?” she went on, more confidently, now that the dark- 
ness hid her mother’s face from her. “Mamma, you had been 
married before you married papa; you must have been even 
younger than I am now when you were first engaged? Ah, you 
had a mother living then, perhaps, who was as dear to you as 
my mother is to me. How did you break the news to her? 
How did you tell her that he loved you, as Philip loves me ? 
How did you tell her that you loved Am, as I love Philip ?” 

Her voice trembled and died away. She waited with a beat- 
ing heart for the reply. 

None came. She raised her lips to her mother’s lips; they 
startled her by their coldness. She tightened her clasp about 
her mother’s neck; the arras that encircled her returned no re- 
assuring pressure. 

“Oh, speak to me, mamma !” she entreated; “your silence 
frightens me — it makes me afraid that you are angry with me. 
Pray, pray speak to me !” 

The answer came then, in changed, husky tones, that were 
barely recognizable as Mrs. Kavanagh’s : “ Forgive me if I fright- 
ened you, ray love. I’m not well — I’m not myself to-night.” 
She roused herself with an effort ; she shook off the numbness 
that had stolen over her when her last hope died, slain by her 
daughter’s words. “You startled me with your news, for one 
thing,” she went on. “ Had I guessed part of it already ? Per- 
haps so. Quite news to me, though, to hear that my daughter 
has given away her heart ; quite news to hear that Miss Rosa- 
lind Kavanagh is going to become Lady Lidyard. Has Philip 
spoken to your father? Have you? No; of course it is re- 
served for me to tell him to-morrow that he has lost his daugh- 
ter. Come, let me hear everything. When is the wedding to 
be? Has Philip got as far as that already? No answer? Ah, 


MORE SHADOWS. 


151 


I know what the matter is ! I haven’t congratulated my sweet- 
est ! I haven’t said I’m pleased ! The Lidyard estates are 
among the greatest in the country — the Lidyard diamonds are 
fit for a duchess to wear — or my Rosalind ! How could I be 
otherwise than pleased ?” She put Rosalind roughly away from 
her ; she rose to her feet, and burst out laughing. 

Rosalind looked at her in silence. It has come to all of us, 
sooner or later in life, to acknowledge ourselves less indispensa- 
ble to the happiness of those dearest to us than we once fondly 
imagined ; to find them easily reconciled to the absence that 
tortures us ; to know that we suffer more in the thought of an 
approaching separation from our beloved than the beloved them- 
selves. That inevitable experience had come to her. “ Oh ! 
mamma,” she broke out, wounded to the quick by the thought 
that the prospect of their parting could be treated so lightly by 
her mother, “ are you so ready to part with me ? Have I been 
so unreasonable, so unloving, that you are glad to get rid of me, 
after all ?” 

The pathetic tones of the clear young voice, the touching 
sorrow in the candid eyes that met her own, pierced to the very 
heart of the unhappy woman. 

“ ‘ Ready to part with you ! — glad to get rid of you ! ’ Oh, 
my darling — my darling ! ” She snatched the daughter of her 
adoption to her bosom, almost fiercely — she covered her with 
kisses — she lavished caressing epithets upon her in an irrepressi- 
ble outburst of despairing tenderness. “ Have I ever been cold 
to you — have I ever been unkind to you that you should think 
so hardly of me ? Have I ever — ?” her tone changed. “ Do you 
remember when you were a child, and said your innocent child- 
ish prayers at my knee ? If I had died then, you would have 
remembered me lovingly ? — the memory of your second mother 
would have been a tender, sacred memory with you always? 
Not a thing to shrink from— not a thing to shudder at as! — 
Oh, my God 1 I’m talking wildly — I’m frightening you again — 
I’m only fit to be by myself, to-night. Kiss me — and let me go!” 

She tore herself away and ran into the adjoining bed-chamber. 
The curtain fell behind her, the door closed upon her, the key 
clicked in turning. For the second time that day — for the sec- 
ond time in her life — Rosalind found herself locked out of her 
mother’s room. 


152 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER X. 

THE STORY CONTINUED IN ANOTHER EXTRACT FROM GEORGE 
KAVANAGH’S PRIVATE JOURNAL. 

“ Selbrigg Hall, S^temher 23d. 

“ The cat — perhaps it would be more appropriate to say the 
Cupid — is out of the bag at last. My pretty niece Rosalind and 
my handsome young friend Philip are openly engaged ! The an- 
nouncement that everybody has expected for I don’t know 
how long, has been made, the fact that has been perfectly patent 
to everybody from the beginning has now been triumphantly 
brought forth to the light of day. It is wonderful to observe 
how surprised everybody is. 

“When I say ‘everybody,’ I don’t mean the population of 
the county, but speak of the representative members of the two 
families henceforth to be united by a closer tie than that of 
friendship. Lady Lidyard came blundering over here this 
morning. I use the term ‘ blundering ’ advisedly, in relation to 
a woman who creates a whirlwind when she enters a room, and 
knocks down most of the lighter articles of furniture in it before 
leaving it. Her ladyship was good enough to express her pleas- 
ure at the prospect of the match. No other choice on Philip’s 
part could have reconciled her, she declared, to becoming the 
Dowager Lady Lidyard but the choice he happens to have 
made. Not bad for the mother of a baronet whose property 
and title came to him on the demise of a hypochondriacal 
bachelor uncle ! Not bad for a woman whose husband was only 
a plain, henpecked ‘ Mister !’ But the person who reminded my 
lady that she has no legal right to wear a handle to her name 
because her son has got one, would do it at the risk of annihila- 
tion. Nobody has yet volunteered for the service, and it is un- 
likely that anybody will. While that indomitable woman lives 
she will stick to her honorable prefix ; and when she dies, her 
tombstone will be not only a lasting memorial of all the femi- 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


153 


nine virtues, but a continual testimony to the obstinacy of the 
feminine temper and the tenacity of the feminine will. 

“ I have said that the county is not to be taken into our con- 
fidence just yet. AVith the necessary allowances for leakage, the 
secret will be kept for another week or two, when official an- 
nouncement of the engagement is to be made through the me- 
dium of a ball. The Chase has not been the scene of such a 
merrymaking since Philip came of age. Now the Chase will 
uncover its ancient brocade, and beeswax its historical oak, and 
set its noble old cellars flowing in honor of Philip’s intended wife. 
Staid local notabilities will frisk and gambol upon its polished 
floors with the wives and daughters of their neighbors, while 
their neighbors perform corresponding evolutions with their own 
womenkind; the local depot will contribute its quota of men 
who, disdaining tQ show their heels to their enemies, have yet no 
objection to exhibit them for the delectation of their friends ; 
and the Daffodils and the Greens will be invited to flourish side 
by side, upon this most special occasion, as peaceably as their 
vegetable namesakes do in London market-gardens. As for the 
young couple whose determination to make each other blissful 
or miserable for life is to be announced with such a flourish of 
trumpets : Philip — I take Philip first — is alternately radiant 
and sheepish ; with the glow and tremble of her young happi- 
ness upon her, my niece looks prettier than ever. Brilliant plu- 
mage, sweet notes, bright glances for the pairing season ; moult- 
ing feathers and cracked tones and leaden looks for the nipping 
winter, when youth and hope and song and love lie buried under 
the snow. 

“ My brother James is almost as gratified as Lady Lidyard with 
the news of the engagement. Philip’s father was the friend of 
his early manhood — Philip is almost as dear to him already as a 
son. My brother’s wife — ! 

“Is it possible that eyes more loving, more familiar with her 
looks and gestures than mine are, have failed to notice the ex- 
traordinary alteration that a few days — I might say a few hours 
— have wrought in Mrs. Kavanagh ? 

“ She is strangely restless and irritable in tone and demeanor. 
The gracious quietude, the matronly repose, that came like balm 
to soothe the wearied senses, the tired mind — where are they ? 


154 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


Gone, with the candid loot that solicited your confidence, the 
charming smile that thanked you for it when it was given. She 
laughs as frequently, and with as little cause, as an affected 
woman of society, who has got nothing in her head but her teeth, 
and is bent on showing them. She talks continually, and most 
upon the theme, of all others, that she might be expected to 
avoid. Rosalind’s engagement, Rosalind’s future husband, Rosa- 
lind’s brilliant prospects, are continually the subjects of her con- 
versation. The eager desire she exhibits to hasten the marriage 
arrangements by every means within her power I should stig- 
matize as indecent did I not guess the truth. 

“ Ah, is it unnatural, as well as unreasonable, that we should, 
some of us, rebel against the decree that Nature has issued and 
that Heaven ratifies? They are bone of our bone, and flesh of 
our flesh, or united to us by ties even closer and dearer than 
the ties of consanguinity, bonds of natural selection and instinct- 
ive tenderness — those who drink of our cup and sleep in our 
bosoms, and walk the daily path of life side by side with us. 
Our joys are theirs, and as little of our sorrows as we can spare 
them ; they are ours in affection and sweet obedience ; ours in 
heart and mind ; till one day a stranger comes, and once palm 
has met with palm, and glance with glance of our beloved, they 
are ours no more. Love’s alchemy has wrought in them the 
mystic transmutation, and our wildest pleadings or our sternest 
commands are of less avail than the waving of a finger or the 
trembling of a hair, to turn them from that new, strange fealty. 

“ Well, well ! Let the comprehension, the sympathy, that may 
never be openly expressed, be written down here. I understand. 
And again — I am sorry for Rosalind’s mother !” 


CHAPTER XL 
THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ I BROKE off in that last sentence to renew my ancient ac- 
quaintance with British sport. Killing time by killing partridges 
is, in my middle-aged days, as it was in my young ones, a recog- 
nized form of diversion for hot weather, in the opinion of the 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


155 


landed English gentleman. Dare I say that I resigned my pen 
for the less lethal weapon with a feeling of regret ? 

“My brother James, ray young friend Philip, and his friend 
Mr. Reginald Hawley, with the addition of myself, made up the 
party. The game-keeper in attendance was an old acquaintance 
of mine, and in the days when I remember him the most notori- 
ous young setter of springs, ferreter of rabbits, tickler of trout, 
and appropriator of pheasants in the county. The chrysalis in cor- 
duroys has burst, in process of time, into a butterfly in velveteens 
and leggings. My scapegrace young companion in many an un- 
lawful adventure of wood, stream, and fallow is now a gray- 
headed, wooden-faced family man, irreproachable as to character, 
and the terror of the poaching fraternity for miles round. They 
can’t imagine, for the life of them, poor rogues, how it is that 
he circumvents them ; how the unlawful presence of fur or feath- 
er upon suspected premises is invariably detected by Luke, and 
as invariably brought home to them. ‘ Set a thief to catch a 
thief ’ is a vigorous old Ajiglo-Saxon proverb. Perhaps some of 
the sharper among them quote it when the name of their old 
enemy crops up in conversation now and then. 

“ It has been a still day and a scorching day. The crackling 
of the stubble underfoot, the smell of baked earth, dry vegeta- 
tion, and gunpowder reminded me of the old days when I fol- 
lowed my father from fleld to field, and from cover to cover, 
proud in the possession of the first gun I had ever called my 
own. Let me thank the steady hand, the quick eye, the experi- 
ence gained in those early days for much : for deliverance 
from death by starvation, for deliverance from death by savage 
beasts and still more savage men, in the wild years of my later 
wanderings upon soils less kindly and under skies more burning 
than those of my native land. 

“ My interest soon flagged, my attention soon wandered. If I 
betrayed a lack of interest in the sport, so did Hawley. He 
shot almost at random, it seemed to me, though his shooting 
almost invariably met with success. He yawned when he stopped 
to jam fresh cartridges into the breech, he yawned when the 
birds fell to his gun, and though he swore when he missed, he 
didn’t swear with any heartiness. As to my brother and Philip, 
they did their duty as behooved two responsible British land- 
owners, and slaughtered systematically, and with the tranquil 


156 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


enjoyment that comes of habitude. I lagged behind at last, and 
began to listen to the game-keeper. It is needless to say that 
fulminations against the deeds of poachers great and small form- 
ed the staple of the conversation which he addressed to one of his 
subordinates. The cottage of one Moses Fenman, a laborer, liv- 
ing on — it was suspected by — the estate, and supposed to be the 
possessor of a gun, had lately been subjected to a rigorous search 
for the unlawful weapon, of which, however, no trace had been 
discovered, according to the under-keeper. 

“ ‘Dar sea !’ ejaculated Luke, with immense disdain ; ‘ you goo 
walk’n’ in an’ ask himn to show it you, maybea. Luk in th’ 
chirana corner, yu did, an’ behind th’ door, an’ under th’ bed, an’ 
takes your leave, I s’pose. Luk up th’ chimna, an’ on th’ rufe, 
an’ in th’ mattrass sackin’ next time, before yow comn away.’ 

“ ‘ Or in the pightle,* or on the sheltered side of the muck- 
heap, under the straw,’ I suggested, breaking in upon the col- 
loquy. ‘ There’s no better hiding-place for a poacher’s gun than 
a muck-heap, when its warm and dry. You used to keep yours 
in the muck-heap, Luke, when you and I were boys.’ 

“ With this remark, I tossed my own gun to the giggling un- 
der-keeper, and walked smartly away. 

“ I had had no definite intention of going to the Manor-house, 
but my aimless walk led me across the field path-way back into 
the grounds of the Hall, and through the upper lodge-gates out 
upon the village green. A hobbled horse and a couple of don- 
keys were the undisturbed possessors of the patch of pasture ; 
the sound of droning voices came through the open windows of 
the school-house, where their infantile persecutors were pent up, 
simmering in the broiling heat of afternoon. 

“ ‘ I beg your pardon, sir.’ 

“ A stranger’s voice addressed me — a stranger confronted me 
when I turned round. A neatly-dressed, ordinary-looking little 
man, with a smug, business face. He might have been an auc- 
tioneer, or a lawyer’s clerk, or a surveyor’s assistant. He was 
very hot and dusty, and he wiped his heated face with a large 
white handkerchief as he begged my pardon again, and begged 
to be directed by the nearest way to Selbrigg Hall. 

“ I pointed to the gate-way I had just emerged from, with my 
stick. 

* Ditch. 



THE JOUKNAL— CONTINUED. 


157 


“ ‘ The family are at home,’ I said to him ; ‘ but visitors are 
always free to walk through the grounds. Not that the place 
is a show -place, but there are some parts of it well worth 
seeing.’ 

‘“I am obliged to you, sir,’ returned the little man, ‘ but my 
errand is not one of pleasure.’ He looked at his dusty clothes 
mournfully, as he added, ‘ I came from London this morning to 
keep a business appointment with a person resident in this neigh- 
borhood. It has been a long journey and a hot journey, and 
when I got out at the nearest station, four miles away, I found 
that, no conveyance being attainable, there was nothing for it 
but to walk. I have walked, as you observe.’ He glanced at 
his dusty boots this time, and the spectacle they presented really 
appeared to distress him. ‘ I have heard it said, sir,’ he went 
on, ‘that people, rarely appreciate the blessings of living in the 
country until they take up their abode in towns. Let me say, 
for my part, that I shall return to London this evening with a 
more grateful comprehension of the ad\|antages enjoyed by a 
resident in that metropolis than I ever was conscious of before 
to-day.’ 

“ ‘ Fresh air, green trees, bright skies,’ I suggested, pointing 
with my stick to the lovely landscape that spread about us. 

‘ These are advantages that London hasn’t got to give you. Let 
me recommend you to enjoy them while you can.’ 

“ He, too, looked at the landscape, disparagingly, and shook 
his head. ‘In point of space,’ said this obstinate little man, 

‘ you have got the better of us, I admit ; but space is confusing 
— too much of it. You are green enough, I grant, but to a Lon- 
doner your greenness is obstropulous. Not but what your air is 
fresh enough, though I have heard medical practitioners say that 
a tinge of smoke is far from being un’ealthy. The parks, sir, 
are more to my way of thinking. Not the parks alone ! Lord ! 
I could show you a square in Finsbury — !’ He broke off, 
^nd pulled out his handkerchief and once more mopped his 
face. ‘I’m forgetting my business. I’m keeping a client wait- 
ing,’ he said ; ‘ both against rules. Sir, I wish you a good after- 
noon.’ 

“ The gate-way swallowed him — he was gone. On the pow- 
dery road at my feet lay a card; I stooped and picked it up. 
On it was coarsely printed : 


168 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


DIX BROTHERS & CO., 

BILL BROKERS, REVERSIONARY AGENTS, ETC. 

Private Discount Bank of Middlesex, 

4 MINTING YARD, LYDGATE STREET, E.C. 

“ I put the card in ray pocket, I don’t know why, and walked 
on, leaving the money-lender’s clerk or partner, whatever he is, 
to pursue his way to the Hall. It was no affair of mine, but I 
caught myself wondering what he wanted there? 

“ Almost unconsciously my footsteps led me to the Manor- 
house. Yielding to the impulse of the moment, I passed under 
the green clipped arch that dominates the gate-way and rang the 
hall door-bell. No one answered. I knocked, and the sound 
seemed to echo through the whole house. I glanced aside at 
the windows of the room, half library, half dining-room, where 
Hoell usually sits. The blinds were drawn down. Once more 
I knocked, and this time the door was opened by the house- 
keeper, Mrs. Weather. Before I could utter the words of in- 
quiry that were upon my lips, she stopped me. 

“ ‘ My master can see no visitors,’ she said. ‘ It’s one of my 
master’s bad days. He can’t even bear his own folk near him 
at such times, much less’ — she broke off there, but her look add- 
ed insolently, ‘ much less you, a stranger.’ 

“ What could I do but apologize, leave a polite message, and 
retire? Her glossy-black eyes watched me from the threshold 
till I had passed through the garden-gate, as suspiciously as 
though I had been a tramp. The man who spoke to the woman 
who carries gypsy blood in her veins, in the language of the gyp- 
sies, is no favorite with Pleasant Weather. 

“ It was growing late as I retraced my steps to the Hall. The 
nearest way to my own room led along the corridor upon which 
the doors of the library, dining-room, drawing-room, and those 
other of the principal rooms of the house which are situated 
on the ground-floor and look upon the garden, open. The door 
of Mrs. Kavanagh’s private sitting-room opened as I passed — its 
mistress appeared upon the threshold. With her, and in the act 
of taking leave from her, was Mr. Dix. 

Mr. Dix — it is so easy to call him by that name upon the 
card — pretended not to recognize me. As the servant appeared 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


159 


to take him away, Mrs. Kavanagh delayed him. ‘The business 
must be attended to immediately,’ she insisted, anxiously. ‘ Re- 
member that I must hear from you not later than to-morrow 
afternoon.’ Mr. Dix, who appears to be more susceptible to 
Nature in the form of a handsome woman than in that of a 
charming landscape, laid his hand upon his heart, and assured 
her that she should positively hear from him by the afternoon’s 
post upon the following day. As he vanished, my sister-in-law 
turned to me. ‘ Do you wonder that I am anxious to have my 
business attended to?’ she asked. ‘ It is of vital importance to 
me^ if it doesn’t matter to anybody else. Here is the whole of it 
in a nutshell : I have got six old, six positively genuine Shera- 
ton chairs. They resemble our friend the Parliamentary candi- 
date for Slowetown in the respect of being seatless. I am going 
to intrust them to the best upholsterer in Norwich to be restored 
— and he has sent his foreman out here to look at them, and to 
make an estimate of the cost. You have a soul for old furniture, 
George. Remind me, to-morrow, and I will show you my Shera- 
ton chairs before they are taken away.’ 

“ I insensibly yielded, as I always do, to the charm of her 
manner and the melody of her voice. It was not until after- 
wards, when I was safe in my own room, that I began to wonder. 
To wonder why the dusty traveller of the morning, self-avowed 
a Londoner, and carrying the business card of a city firm of 
money-lenders, should reappear upon the boards of Mrs. Kava- 
nagh’s private sitting-room in the character of an upholsterer’s 
foreman from Norwich. And of half a dozen hypotheses that I 
invented to account for this extraordinary fact, not one but 
proved to be as destitute of any supporting basis as Mrs. Kava- 
nagh’s Sheraton chairs.” 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ At the dinner-table this evening the usual house-party was 
augmented by the presence of Sir Philip Lidyard and Mr. Haw- 
ley. Upon my brother James, upon myself, and my once fel- 
low-passenger on Loard the Volga, devolved the task of keep- 


. 160 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


ing up the ball of conversation, for the lovers confined them- 
selves almost exclusively to an unspoken dialogue of lover-like 
glances, and Mrs. Kavanagh was unusually pale and silent. 

“ He talked — I mean Hawley — and talked well. Let me d(^ 
him justice in setting down that favorable opinion. He has 
travelled much and seen much in the course of the years in 
which he has followed his profession ; and he can describe his 
experiences in language sufficiently vigorous and well chosen. 
He has a rough, rather brutal fund of humor at command when 
it is needed, and an infinite capacity for enjoying his own jokes, 
especially those in which the quality of wit is least perceptible. 
Shall I confess to these pages that once or twice to-night I 
thought his boisterous laughter as offensive as it was causeless, 
and his free-and-easy manner both insolent and ill-bred ! 

“ Prejudice crops up in every line of what I have written 
here regarding Philip’s friend. I deplore my own weakness in 
giving way to so puerile a vice. I endeavor to eradicate it from 
the mental soil in which it has fastened, but the stalk comes 
away in my hand and leaves the roots still obstinately sticking. 
Unprejudiced people — taking my genial brother James and my 
young friend Philip as representatives of that class — regard Mr. 
Reginald Hawley in quite another light. To them his noisy 
laughter, his confident manner, his familiar style of address — re- 
pulsively famifiar, in my opinion, when the object of his atten- 
tion happens to be of the opposite sex — may appear as natural 
and agreeable manifestations of the open nature and the kindly 
heart — with the possession of which prejudiced persons, like my- 
self, don’t credit him. 

“ Not solely on account of that sad old story. The savage 
instinct which leads a young child to take pleasure in the dis- 
memberment of a living fiy, or the torturing of a kitten, is the 
same instinct which prompts the many acts of brutality, or cru- 
elty, or mere thoughtless levity, in which our boyhood revelled in 
times past, and which our manhood sickens at to-day. God 
knows, if these deeds of our careless youth were brought up for 
our arraignment in later life, how many a strong, upright man 
would have cause to bow his head in shame, or in open gratitude 
to the Divine Mercy which preserves so many of us, almost 
against our wills, in some moment of overpowering temptation, 
from overstepping that fatal boundary which divides from crime. 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


161 


Hawley’s once victim has held out the right hand of fellowship 
to him ; it is our duty, in the face of that generous example, to 
extend it, too. If my grasp be not as hearty as I could wish, 
am I to blame? 

“Are we? For the strict monopoly of prejudice against the 
new addition to our modest circle may not be boasted by me. 

“ Coming in from the heated dining-room to-night, into the 
mellow light and flower-scented atmosphere of the drawing-room, 
I saw my niece and Mr. Hawley close together, by the piano. 
She was seated, making a pretty picture in her simple white dress, 
with her golden-brown hair coiled about the pretty head that bent 
over the music she was searching through, and he was stooping 
over her, affecting to help her, while he talked to her in a low 
tone. As I looked at them, admiring her, and admiring Am, 
for he is a fine, personable man, as the old women say, and his 
careless style of dress contributes admirably to the advantageous 
display of his robust physical development, his big throat, his 
square head, his broad shoulders, and his muscular limbs, the 
harmonious relations existing between my niece and her father’s 
guest were evidently disturbed. Rosalind pushed the music 
away from her and suddenly rose from the piano. Without an- 
other word, without another look in his direction, she turned 
from him and walked away to the other end of the room. 

“ She met me half-way, and took my arm in that pretty, con- 
fident way of hers, and drew me towards a window recess where 
the light curtains fell about us like a mist, and a stand of flower- 
ing shrubs effectually screened us from observation. 

“ hate that man !’ she burst out, incautiously. 

“ ‘ My dear,’ I expostulated, weakly, ‘ are you speaking of 
Philip’s friend?’ 

“ ‘ Of Philip’s friend !’ she retorted, pinching my arm smartly. 

‘ How can he be a friend of Philip’s ? How can Philip look at 
him in the ridiculously admiring way in which he is looking at 
him at this moment ?’ 

“ ‘ My dear,’ I repeated, more weakly than before, ‘ there is a 
certain amount of unreasonableness — ’ 

“ She pinched ray arm this time quite viciously. 

“ ‘ Argue as you choose, say whatever you can in his favor, 

11 


162 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


nothing on earth shall induce me to like Mr. Reginald Hawley. 
Talk about unreasonableness! You don’t call Jock unreasonable 
when he slinks away from, or shows his teeth to, the stranger 
whom his instinct tells him is untrustworthy or dangerous ! Is 
the instinct that warns a woman to avoid the man whom she 
feels to be the enemy of herself and of her sex, less worthy of 
respect than J ock’s V 

“ ‘ What has he done ? What has he said to convey such a 
disagreeable impression, my dear ?’ I asked. Secretly, I should 
have been rather obliged to my niece than otherwise had she 
been able to furnish me with a presentable reason for disliking 
the man. 

“ ‘ He has done nothing,’ she answered. ‘ But he looked at 
me, he spoke t^.^ in a way that makes my blood boil when I 
recall it. When^were together at the piano, a moment or two 
ago — ’ She stopped and looked puzzled. ‘ The words seem 
meaningless now,’ she said. ‘ We were turning over the music, 
mamma’s and mine. He suggested that the piano might not be 
our only resource in the long winter evenings ; that probably 
we played cards as well. Whist, poker, ecarte, especially ecarte. 
He seemed to take it for granted that we were adepts at all these 
games. “ You are mistaken,” I told him ; “ we never play cards. 
Mamma disapproves of cards.’ Mamma was standing close by ; 
she must have heard me. He put his hands in his pockets and 
laughed softly to himself. He leaned against the piano and re- 
peated my words with quite an indescribable manner and tone : 
“ We don’t play cards. Mamma disapproves of cards !” I 
can’t account for the indignation against him that his words 
roused in me. I only know that I hated him at that moment 
inexpressibly — that I walked away from him lest he should see 
the hatred in my face.’ 

‘“The words were harmless enough,’ I said, trying, as ineffect- 
ually as usual, to do him justice. ‘ Mr. Hawley has lived among 
rough people, as he tells us. Mr. Hawley has, perhaps insensi- 
bly, acquired a manner which does not endear him to young ladies 
who stand upon their dignity. Let us acquit him of any inten- 
tion to be offensive in adopting a certain familiarity of tone in ad- 
dressing the young lady who is the promised wife of his oldest 
friend.’ 

“ ‘ Mr. Hawley does not know of my engagement to Philip,’ 


THE JOURNAL-CONTINUED. 


163 


responded my niece. ‘ I have asked papa not to tell him of it— I 
have forbidden Philip to mention the subject to him— and Philip 
knows better than to disobey me. The sentiments I entertain 
towards Philip’s friend are of such a nature that I should instantly 
break it off if he as much as mentioned my engagement in my 
hearing. Better not be engaged at all,’ said my niece, ‘ than be 
obliged to endure the congratulations of a person of that intol- 
erable description.’ 

“ With the delivery of this final shot she left me as a servant 
announced, ‘Mr. Hoell Brinnilow.’” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ It struck me even in the first glance at him that he was look- 
ing worn and ill. His accustomed elasticity of spirits had de- 
serted him, he leaned upon his crutches, as he moved across the 
room, with the heaviness of mental depression and physical weak- 
ness. He did not give his hand on this occasion to Hawley — it 
was plain to me that he even avoided looking at him as much as 
possible. His thin cheeks colored with a faint refiection of the 
burning red that had stained them on the night of his meeting 
with the old tyrant of his boyish days, when Mrs. Kavanagh spoke 
to him, and his glance encountered hers. When he finally sub- 
sided in an arm-chair and shaded his eyes from the light with 
one lean, shaking hand, I was as unfeignedly relieved as he was 
in his no longer being the focus of general observation. 

“ The evening crept slowly away. I looked about me and. re- 
called, one by one, other evenings I had spent in that room since 
my arrival : the cheerful, pleasant fiow of conversation, intermin- 
gled with music and with laughter, and broken by silences that 
were as natural and unstrained as the pauses in a bird’s song ; the 
atmosphere of home-like ease, the simple charm of which the 
stranger felt and yielded to. How was it that he failed to feel it 
now ! As we had been on other nights we were to-night ; the 
same home party gathered in the same home room. What was 
lacking? There was a nameless chill upon us, there was an 


164 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


unseen blight upon us, that froze the laughter upon our lips and 
withered up the kindly flowers of genial ease and cheerful confl- 
dence in their first bloom. 

“ Was Hawley the cause of this ? He must have been. Of the 
whole party he was the only person present who was natural or at 
ease. There was little constraint upon the conversation with which 
he favored us. He talked, and talked about himself, for the most 
part. It should be admitted, in justice to this gentleman, that in 
professing to hold an indifferent opinion of mankind in general, 
he does not, after the fashion of his fellow misanthropes, secretly 
make or candidly avow an exception in favor of himself. We 
are all of us humbugs, according to him, and the noblest, the sin- 
cerest, the worthiest among us are simply those who counterfeit 
the best. He tells us so, and appeases our indignation at being 
found out and taxed by him with the frank admission that he is 
a humbug himself — and perfectly aware of it. 

“ ‘ Look at me !’ he says, in effect. ‘ A man singled out to per- 
form an arduous duty ; a man who is expected to justify the con- 
fidence placed in him by his employers and the public, by furnish- 
ing the greatest possible amount of reliable information — upon 
subjects which don’t interest the great mass of newspaper read- 
ers in the least — in the most condensed form possible, and in the 
shortest possible space of time. Do I justify that confidence ? As 
well as ninety-nine men out of a hundred, perhaps, as little fit- 
ted, by natural ability and previous education, to follow such a 
profession as I am myself. I didn’t choose the profession — it 
chose me. Interest in a certain quarter was the stone that helped 
an idle, good-for-nothing young rascal into the saddle that should 
seat a better man ; influence in the same quarter keeps him stick- 
ing in it while his betters are sprawling in the mud. Don’t 
admire me for my candor in speaking plainly. I’m only candid 
because I don’t care a hang for your admiration or your disap- 
proval either, ray very good souls I’ 

“ The largest and most dismal breach in a conversation — which 
was remarkable for uncomfortable intervals and oppressive pauses 
— was repaired by my brother James. My brother is, as I have 
before said, a man of few words and regular habits. One of these 
habits consists in going to sleep after dinner in a particular chair 
in a particular corner of the drawing-room. Wakefulness is pain- 
ful but possible to my brother upon certain occasions when the 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


165 


credit of the family demands it. He asserts and maintains this 
condition upon all such occasions by the telling of an Indian tiger- 
story. 

“ Who ever heard of an old Indian oflScer who hadn’t got a 
tiger-story ? This is a tremendous one, and' involves great exer- 
tions in the telling. It requires that all the faculties of the teller, 
if not those of the listener, should be kept upon the stretch. It 
involves the necessity — for its more vivid presentment — of my 
brother’s striding up the room, as in the act of leading his native 
beaters to battle, at the request of the chief Gooroo — what is a 
Gooroo ? — of a certain village whose inhabitants long had groaned 
under the depredations of the brindled monster of the jungle ; and 
of his creeping cautiously down it again, as in the act of tracking 
the aforesaid monster to its hidden lair. Its roars of agony when 
wounded have to be graphically rendered, and the sensations of the 
hunter on being knocked down and half-smothered by the tremen- 
dous impact of its expiring carcass are worth nothing if not dra- 
matically conveyed. The story inevitably culminates in the ex- 
hibition of the marks of the creature’s claws upon the forearm of 
the hunter — in the description of the rejoicings of the population 
of the village, which turned out en masse to help carry the body 
home — and terminates with the indication of the skin — which 
has been made into a hearth-rug — with the bullet-holes adorned 
by a silver mounting, suitably inscribed. 

“ We have all heard the story times upon times. It begins: 
‘ When I was in Bengal in the year ’47 — ’ It began so to-night — 
I write late in my own room, being further from sleep than I ever 
remember to have been in my life — and went on at its usual rate 
of progress to its accustomed end, when my brother subsided, 
breathlessly, into his arm-chair, amid the grateful appreciations of 
those whom his efforts had rescued from conversational wreck.” 


166 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

‘“A GOOD story, colonel,’ said Hawley. ‘Tiger-stories told 
by the hunter possess the admirable faculty of harrowing our 
feelings and soothing them at the same time. Everything 
must have ended all right for him, or he wouldn’t be sitting 
there to talk about it. Come, I’m not much of a sportsman 
myself, but I have got a tiger-story I’m inclined to back against 
yours. Are you inclined to hear it, for your part V 

“ My brother, struggling, now that his muscles were relaxed, 
against the encroachments of approaching slumber, was under- 
stood to say that he should be delighted. We w^ere all delight- 
ed, as Mr. Hawley surveyed one and another of us with a ques- 
tioning glance. Philip composed himself to attention with an 
air which said, ‘ The time has come now for my friend Hawley 
to distinguish himself ; the time has come for my friend Haw- 
ley to prove himself to you the hero I believe him to be. Listen, 
as I am going to listen, with all your ears — this story is going 
to be no end of a story !’ 

“ ‘ My story, unlike your story, colonel,’ said Hawley, ‘ hasn’t 
got myself as its hero. My story, in the same way as your story, 
has got a man-eating tigress as its heroine. My friend, like your' 
self, got off with a mauling ; he bears the marks of the teeth 
and claws of a ferocious beast of prey up to this hour. But the 
beast that gave them wasn’t like your beast, one of the ordinary 
sort. No. My tigress, colonel, was one of the human kind.’ 

“ There was a slight stir and rustle in the room as he made 
this announcement. I don’t know from what quarter it came. 
I was looking at Hawley. I was wondering why the telling of 
the story was so delightful to him that he dribbled the words 
out of his lips as a miser might dribble coins out of a bag — one 
by one, and with a greedy, reluctant pleasure in hearing them 
fall. 

“ ‘ Am I unlucky enough to have forfeited your interest at 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


167 


the outset by letting out that I’m telling the story of a tigerish 
female, and not of a ferhale tiger ?’ he went on. ‘ Wait a bit ! 
I pledge myself to recall that interest before I have done. The 
haunt of my wild beast, colonel, was not a jungle-cave in the 
Presidency of Bengal, but a gambling-house in the Belgian capi- 
tal. She didn’t tear out the throat and pick the bones' of the 
hero of my .story she drugged his coffee and picked his pockets 
instead, of a considerable sum of money, which the young idiot 
— he was a young idiot, and a dissipated young idiot at that 
time — happened to have about him. And she made good her 
escape with her confederates before a rescue party ’ — he glanced 
at Philip — ‘ which had been despatched from the hotel at which 
our young idiot was staying — tracked him out and hunted him 
down, forced an entrance into the deserted rooms, and found 
him there.’ 

‘“Was there no possibility of regaining some of the stolen 
money by tracing out the thieves?’ I asked, for his silence invited 
some conjecture. ‘Did they leave no clew behind which the 
police might have made use of to that end ?’ 

“ ‘ They left no clew behind which the police might avail them- 
selves of,’ answered Hawley. ‘But something which might be 
classed under that heading came — never mind how — into the pos- 
session of the man who had been robbed, and he was wise 
enough to keep it from being submerged under the sagacities of 
the detective force of Brussels. It was a little thing enough — 
merely an old-fashioned locket, made to hold two portraits. One 
of them was the portrait of the woman who, his instinct more 
than his hazy recollection of what took place after he had swal- 
lowed that potent cup of coffee told him, had been foremost in the 
work of robbing him. With a kind of superstitious belief that 
the locket would bring about the end he had in view — did I say 
that he had made up his mind to hunt her down if it took years 
to do it? — he wore the locket about him night and day. One 
day the fancy took him to take her portrait from its case. He 
found a photographer’s name on the back of it. From that day 
the accomplishment of his end began 'to grow slowly into view.’ 

“He paused and drew a long breath. ‘It’s a hot night!’ he 
said, as he passed his handkerchief across his forehead ; ‘ it’s a 
hot night 1’ 

“ Hoell sat near a window. In his ordinary state of body and 


168 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


mind he would have been the first to scramble up and open 
it. He remained still on this occasion, with his chin upon his 
hands, that were folded across the top of the crutch he used to 
lean upon, looking at and listening to Hawley. I rose, in his 
default, to open the glass door. In doing so I was obliged to 
pass close before my sister-in-law. Inadvertently, I touched her 
foot with mine. In response to my apology she never spoke, or 
looked, or stirred more than if she had been a woman carved 
out of stone. The faint light of the softly-shaded lamp touched 
the white hands lying clasped together in her lap, but did not 
reveal her face to me. She, too, was absorbed, no doubt, in lis- 
tening to Hawley’s story. 

“ He went on, as if the slight interruption had never been, 
still addressing himself to my brother as his listener-in-chief. 

“ ‘ I must consult your memory, colonel,’ he said, ‘ before I 
get on further with my story. Among the more prominent 
events in the comparatively recent history of crime in France, 
the trial of Monsieur Achille Biard for forgery, fraud, and mur- 
der had its share of popularity with the English Press nineteen 
years ago. Have you any recollection of the trial ?’ 

“ Of us all, I was the only one who remembered the case, 
though not through the instrumentality of the English Press. 
I testified, for my part, to that remembrance, on my brother’s 
testifying to ignorance on his. 

“‘Among the many successful disguises invented and carried 
out by that arch -swindler and blackguard. Monsieur Achille 
Biard, before the perpetration of the series of crimes which led 
up to his well-merited end,’ said Hawley, ‘ was one which Mon- 
sieur Achille adopted for a comparatively harmless purpose — 
compared with his usual purposes, of course. Among the young 
lady pupils belonging to one of the principal boarding-schools 
situated in the suburbs of Paris, in the year 1864, quite a sensa- 
tion was excited by th6 appearance of a positive paragon among 
drawing-masters, in the place of a predecessor resigned. The 
predecessor was old and snuffy, and addicted, among other harm- 
less weaknesses, to the use of garlic. Imagine for yourself, then, 
the flutter created among the young ladies by the advent of a 
smart young man in a velvet coat, with a small waist, a scented 
cambric handkerchief, a complexion like a cupid on a chocolate- 
box, and a waxed mustache.’ 


THE JOURNAL-CONTINUED. 


169 


“ He appealed directly to Rosalind this time. Rosalind re- 
sponded, not having forgiven him yet, ‘ Oh, I beg your pardon ! 
Irresistible, of course.’ And looked back again at Philip, who 
had been looking at her. 

“ ‘ “ Irresistible, of course,” ’ echoed Hawley. ‘ Quite a rage 
for art became perceptible in the school, and the most stubborn 
fingers made no objection to hold the pencil, when guided by 
the handsome young drawing-master’s hand. Enthusiasm glow- 
ed hotly for some little time, and then went down below zero, 
when it was found that the drawing- master’s eyes and heart 
were already engaged in the direction of the English pupil-teach- 
er. The English pupil-teacher was an uncommonly handsome 
girl. The English pupil-teacher had a sad history. She was an 
orphan, born of a marriage between people unequal in rank — the 
offspring of an English father and a French mother. Her un- 
deniable good looks and her painful antecedents were made use 
of by the young ladies, on occasion, to wound and irritate her 
in the agreeable way common. I’m told, to young ladies, espe- 
cially those at school.’ 

“ He looked at Rosalind — he appealed to Rosalind a second 
time in speaking these words. My niece disdained to give him 
a look or a word in reply. 

“ ‘ So, the situation given, it’s not difficult to imagine the sec- 
ond situation which arose out of it,’ Hawley continued. ‘A 
handsome young man on one side, a beautiful, presumably inex- 
perienced girl on the other — a proposal of marriage made and 
accepted. What wonder if the English pupil-teacher found her- 
self outside the gates of the boarding-school one fine day, with 
her trunk by her side, and her little fortune of a few hundred 
francs in her pocket, and the handsome young drawing-master — 
in the character of a husband this time — calling a fiacre to 
take them the first few hundred yards upon the road which, pre- 
sumably, they were to travel together for the rest of their lives.’ 

“ Rosalind was beginning to forget her dislike of him in her 
growing interest in the story. * Poor girl !’ she said, half audi- 
bly. My own heart echoed the words, ‘ Poor girl !’ 

“ ‘ Need I say that she was surprised when she found that 
road smoother than she had been led to expect,’ said Hawley. 
‘ She had been prepared to work with him or for him, if need 
be, with the absurd self-sacrifice of her sex. Those sentimental 


170 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


days of newly-married bliss — she rather regretted than otherwise 
— were spent in a pretty house in a fashionable suburb, instead of 
in a garret in a sordid quarter of the town. The only work her 
husband applied himself to was the work of engraving, which he 
sedulously practised in a room at the top of the house — a room 
which even she was not allowed to enter. And the only way in 
which she was expected to employ herself was in cashing bank- 
bills and notes of exchange with which he furnished her from 
time to time, and in bringing him home the money — the money 
earned by our handsome young drawing-master in the exercise of 
his profession as a forger and a thief.’ 

“ ‘And she was his dupe ?’ I broke in. 

“ ‘ She was his dupe,’ responded Hawley. ‘ Things had gone 
on in this way for three years — a daughter had crowmed the 
happiness of Monsieur and Madame Biard — you see I’m telling 
the story in the regular novelistic way — when her eyes were 
opened by the arrival on the scene of the police. Monsieur 
Biard, having had due warning, got away. Perhaps he knew 
that it would be fatal to encumber himself with a woman in his 
flight; perhaps he was tired of her. It’s not unlikely. He left 
her, and her arrest followed, as might have been expected.’ 

“ ‘ He was an abominable scoundrel !’ my brother commented, 
quite hotly for him. 

“ ‘ He was a stupid one,’ amended Hawley, ‘ not to recognize 
the harm her very innocence was capable of doing him, instead 
of counting on it, as he did, as a card in his favor. He got 
away, as I have said. He was not able to leave France, because 
the police were more wide-awake than usual, and the seaports 
and frontier towns were under close surveillance. In a friend’s 
house he found security for the time being. She — ’ 

“ ‘A woman, then ?’ I interrogated. 

“ ‘A woman,’ assented Hawley. ‘A woman whom he had de- 
ceived with a pretended marriage, as he had deceived the English 
pupil-teacher at the boarding-school. A woman who must have 
had some regard for him, even then, for she was jealous enough 
to be dangerous at times. No need to tell you the sordid, mis- 
erable subject of their flnal quarrel. Enough that it was a quar- 
rel which led to his murdering her, and to his ultimate detection 
and arrest, as a consequence of the crime. You have said that 
you remember the trial ?’ 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


171 


“ I answered, ‘ I remember the trial.’ 

“ ‘ No need to meddle with the trial, except where its result is 
concerned,’ Hawley went on. ‘ Monsieur Achille Biard was con- 
victed of a long string of fraudulent offences. Monsieur Achille 
Biard — I have refrained from calling him by any of his various 
aliases^ with a view to being as little confusing as possible — 
Monsieur Biard had been caught red-handed from his murderous 
deed. Enough to say that the defence set up proved utterly 
backboneless. Enough to say that he was convicted, and suf- 
fered the ultimate penalty imposed by the law — ’ 

“ ‘And the unfortunate girl who had been deceived by him,’ 
I broke in again. ‘ What of her ?’ 

“ ‘ Why, I must remind you, if you don’t remember,’ said Haw- 
ley, coolly, ‘that she was convicted of complicity in his latest 
frauds. She was young enough and handsome enough to gain a 
great deal of public sympathy, and to visibly prepossess her judges 
in her favor. According to the regular scale of chastisement 
imposed by French justice for such offences as those she was 
found guilty of, she suffered a light punishment when they sen- 
tenced her to five years’ imprisonment.’ 

“‘Unhappy young creature!’ I exclaimed, irritated and gall- 
ed by the callousness he displayed in recounting the dreadful 
story. 

“ ‘ She didn’t find herself badly off in prison,’ Hawley re- 
sumed. ‘ The matron took a fancy to her, and spoke to the 
governor in her favor. The governor’s account of the attractive 
' prisoner interested his wife, an elderly lady, mischievously given 
to benevolent works. Upon seeing the prisoner this good lady 
was much overcome. It turned out, on inquiry by her husband, 
that Madame Biard — I shall occasionally call her so, to avoid 
monotony — presented a striking resemblance to a younger sister 
of the wife of the governor, a lady who had married unfortu- 
nately and died unhappily, in comparatively early youth. Con- 
sequently, the burden of prison life weighed less heavily than 
ever on the shoulders of our interesting friend. She was allowed 
to read, to write, to nurse the sick in the prison hospital. I be- 
lieve, through the interest of the persons who had obtained her 
these concessions — against the rules of prison discipline and pris- 
on routine — that she obtained her dischaage before she was enti- 
tled to it. Once free, her first thought — ’ 


172 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ ‘ Was of her child,’ I interrupted. ‘ Poor creature ! And 
what of the child V 

“ ‘ The information in response to her inquiries came after 
some delay,’ said Hawley. ‘A letter from the woman to whose 
charge the child had been intrusted told her that the child was 
dead. The result of the shock was a serious illness.’ 

“ ‘As might have been expected,’ I said. 

“ ‘ Oh, as might have been expected, I suppose,’ said Hawley ; 
‘ even a tigress may be attached to her cub, it’s allowed. Aha ! 
I see by your face you’ve put together the unconnected links in 
my story for yourself ! You’ve guessed that my innocent Eng- 
lish pupil-teacher and my dangerous siren of the gambling-house 
in Brussels are one and the same. From the moment when she 
rose from her sick-bed to the moment when the man whom she 
had robbed picked up the locket dropped by her in the act of 
flight — the locket containing the portrait of herself and that of 
her child, taken in the days, we must suppose, when she was a 
happy wife and mother, or the willing tool of an unscrupulous 
adventurer — all trace of Madame Biard was lost. ' Her identity 
was swallowed up in that of the handsome Englishwoman who 
served as decoy to a gambling confederacy — the man-eating 
tigress who lurked in wait for human victims day by day, and 
when she had got them dragged them to her den that she might 
suck their blood and crunch their bones at her leisure.’ 

“ He spoke of the woman with such smothered rancor and ha- 
tred, that despite his previous assurance that another man and not 
himself was the hero of his story, I took the liberty of doubting 
him. I would have taken my oath that he concealed himself 
under the thin disguise of that other man ! 

“ ‘ The facts regarding the woman’s past came into the pos- 
session of the man who had got the locket with her face in it,’ 
he went on, ‘ slowly and by degrees. When they were all in his 
possession, he was no nearer her. She eluded him, in spite of 
all his attempts to find out her whereabouts. Years passed. 
Many changes took place around him — in him, too, perhaps — 
but his purpose never changed, his determination never weak- 
ened. He meant to find her — and he did find her. Not in the 
haunts to which criminals, such as she was, might be expected to 
resort. She had risen in life ; she had used her beauty and her 
cleverness to the best advantage. He found her an honored 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


173 


wife, the bearer of a respected and respectable name ; the irre- 
proachable mother of children, let us say, whose only experience 
of the criminal side of human nature was gathered from the 
newspapers — ’ 

“ Hoell interrupted him there for the first time. ‘ Stop !’ he 
said, suddenly, leaning forward over his crutches and speaking 
with great earnestness. ‘ You have used the word “ criminal ” 
twice in speaking of the woman of your story.’ 

“ ‘ If I did,’ Hawley returned, ‘ I used the right word in the 
right place.’ 

“ ‘ The wrong word !’ Hoell burst out, fervently. ‘ The wrong 
word in the wrong place. Next time you speak of that woman 
don’t call her a criminal — call her a martyr !’ 

“ My brother James was the next to speak. 

“ ‘ I agree in part with my friend Brinnilow,’ he said, ‘ and I 
venture to hope that in the case of your friend, sir, his humanity 
was stronger than his sense of justice. We shall all have need 
of mercy one of these days — there are few of us who can bear 
the thought of that last court-martial of all,’ said my brother, 

‘ with a conscience at rest. I hope your friend remembered that, 
and spared the woman who had injured him. For the sake of 
her husband and her children, if not for her own !’ 

“ ‘ For her own, above all !’ said Hoell. ‘ For the sake of the 
unmerited sufferings endured by that unhappy victim of man’s 
vileness and man’s treachery, her sin should be dealt with ten- 
derly, even by the man whom she had wronged. Was there no 
excuse for her, if, in her misery, forgotten by Heaven as well as 
outcast upon earth, she turned, as the only refuge left her, to 
association with wretches who trade upon human folly, human 
vice, and human despair ? When the Gate of the Prison opened 
for that woman and the Gate of Hope shut in her face — when 
she stood in the sight of the world once more, her womanly 
purity and pride outraged, the memory of her wifely love 
a thing to shudder at, her good name gone forever — her 
child, the one treasure left to her, snatched away by inexorable 
Death — ’ 

“ ‘ Stop a bit,’ said Hawley, ‘ you’re getting on too fast.’ 

“ ‘ You said yourself, just now,’ asserted Hoell, ‘ that the 
nurse’s letter told the unhappy mother of the child that the child 
was dead.’ 


174 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ ‘ And I didn’t say,’ retorted Hawley, ‘ that the letter was a 
lying letter. The child wasn’t dead ! The child’s alive !’ 

“ As these words left his lips Mrs. Kavanagh rose up in her 
place with a dreadful cry. It rings in my ears now as I write 
these words. It was ringing in our ears still, when, as we sur- 
rounded her in the alarm and consternation of the moment, she 
beat us from her, wildly, with her hands, and ran from us as 
though to escape from the room. Only a few steps she had 
taken before her head fell forward, helplessly, upon her breast, 
her knees bent under her, and she dropped at our feet like a 
creature stricken dead. 

“ I have tried to sleep. I can’t sleep. I have lighted my 
candle and lighted my pipe, the faithful solace of many lonely 
days and wakeful nights. The sight of my Journal spread open 
on the desk, with the dry pen lying across the page, has tempt- 
ed me to begin writing again. 

“I have been glancing through pages that were written days 
ago. I lighted — why should I on this particular night? — on the 
account of the dream I had that night at the inn at Hull, and 
read it through. And the words spoken to me in my dream by 
the chief of the gypsy tribe, the old Ziganskie Attaman, have 
fastened on me, and will not be shaken off. 

“ ‘The black-veiled bride who took the hand of my brother’s 
brother was Sorrow, and the shadow that fell upon the house of 
my brother’s people and swallowed it up, was the shadow of 
Shame and Disaster, and — ’ 

“ The feeling of terror that haunts me grows stronger and 
stronger. I did just now what I have not done for many years ; 
I have knelt by my bedside as I used when I was a boy, and 
tried to pray. Broken words — only broken words: ‘If sorrow 
be coming upon those dear to me, if some awful unknown calam- 
ity be about to descend upon and. overwhelm them, oh, avert it 
in Thy mercy, or temper the blow so that it be possible to bear 
it, in compassion for the earthly weakness of the creatures Thou 
hast made!’ 

“ Peace came upon me, or weariness, and I slept after that 
prayer. Slept but to dream. I thought I stood upon the bor- 


BROUGHT TO BAY. 


175 


dcrs of the world beyond, looking, with eyes whose keenness 
mocked our mortal sight, into the celestial distance, towards a 
great white throne. And One sat upon it wrapped in more than 
mortal glory, but the terrors of His face were veiled in an eternal 
stillness, like the stillness that lies upon a frozen sea. And mul- 
titudes of saints kneeled round Him, stretching as far as the eye 
could reach; each in an unspeakable rapture of adoration, but 
petrified and dead. And at the feet of Him who sat upon the 
throne lay wreaths of roses, clusters of roses, and single blossoms, 
some fresh and blooming, others withered and dead. And it 
seemed that I spoke, and asked, ‘ What are those roses that 
bloom and wither at the feet of the dead God ?’ And the voice 
of one unseen replied to me, ‘ The roses are the flowers of earth- 
ly prayers.’ Then, as I looked again, a fresh cluster shone out 
radiantly, and I knew«that that prayer was mine. And even as 
I gazed, it withered away and fell to dust, unanswered. And I 
awoke, as the birds, nested in the creeper that climbs about my 
window, began to stir and chirp with the breaking of the new 
day.” 

END OF THE EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL. 


CHAPTER XV. 

BROUGHT TO BAY. 

“No need,” said Hawley, “of waiting at the meeting-place 
this time. She’s there before me.” 

She was there before him. As she, standing where the nar- 
row hill path-way swerved aside and dipped downward to the 
plateau beneath, had once looked down on him, waiting by the 
Shrieking Pits, so he looked down on her. No sunset shone 
upon his face. It had been a gray, still, misty day; it was a 
gray, still, rainy evening. There was a coppery reflection in the 
sullen sky, there was a brooding heaviness upon the atmosphere 
that gave forewarning of a coming storm. The first low peal 
of thunder rumbled overhead and died away as he went down 
to meet her. 

The border bf her cloak, the skirts of her dress, where they 


176 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


had come in contact with the dripping herbage, were wet and 
draggled. There were rain-drops on her hair, where the hood 
that covered it had fallen or been thrust aside. There was a 
red spot on each of her pale cheeks, her eyes were unnaturally 
large and lustrous, and they met his, for the first time, without 
repulsion and without fear. 

“ ‘ It’s my turn to protest this time,” said Hawley, taking off 
his soft felt hat and beating the wet from it against his knee. 
“ How do you know that my reputation isn’t endangered by my 
meeting you here by your own appointment? How do you 
know that the servant who brought your letter didn’t peep into 
it on the way ? Upon my soul, you are an incautious woman !” 

“ More than that !” she answered. “ Call me a frantic woman, 
and you will have hit upon the truth.” She drew close to him, 
she looked at him with wide-open, shining eyes; she laid one 
hand, almost familiarly, upon his arm. ^‘Do I look mad?” she 
went on. “ I feel mad. Mad with joy. Does my hand burn ? 
Can you feel it through your sleeve ? I’m in a fever. A fever 
of joy. Do you wonder that I couldn’t wait ? Do you wonder 
that I wrote to you when I couldn’t bear the suspense any lon- 
ger?” Her voice sank to a whisper, her hot breath scorched his 
cheek as she came nearer to him, oblivious, in her devouring ea- 
gerness, of the relations in which they stood. “ Have you for- 
gotten ? Last night, when you laid bare the miserable secret of 
my past before them all — when you told the wretched story of 
my life to the friends who love me and believe in me — you left 
it unfinished. Tell the end of it now to me ! Tell me about my 
child!” 

Those last words broke from her rapturously and loudly. She 
trembled and shook, and her bosom heaved. The blessed tears 
came to her relief at last. She put up her handkerchief and 
wiped them away. “ Women’s tears are annoying to most men,” 
she said, humbly. “ Mine shall not annoy you if I can help it ; 
but it is hard to keep them back when I think of her. I lay 
awake last night — I walked about my room, as I have done for 
many nights past — but this time it was happiness that drove sleep 
away. I tried to paint her face upon the darkness — I tried to 
imagine what she must be like after all these years. Useless ! I 
can think of her only as a baby — I can feel her little arms on my 
neck as I speak now. Ha, ha, ha ! It sounds absurd in your ears. 


BROUGHT TO BAY. 


177 


doesn’t it?” She pushed her hood back impatiently. “The rain 
cools my head,” she went on. “ People have lost their reasons, 
haven’t they, before now, who have been suddenly frightened or 
surprised ? My brain went round when you told your heavenly 
news. Your voice sounded to me like an archangel’s trumpet 
bidding the dead arise. You bade my dead arise, didn’t you, 
when, with a word, you gave my little lost darling back to me? 
Oh, don’t keep me in torture any longer ! Be merciful ! Be 
generous — as you were when you told me that she was alive ! 
How shall I find her ? Where is she ?” 

“ How should I know ?” said Hawley. He shook her hand, 
not roughly, from his sleeve, and thrust his own hands into his 
pockets. 

She sighed, wearily and patiently. “ He means to take his re- 
venge before he tells me ! Only fair, perhaps, only fair !” She 
caught him by the sleeve again, she turned him imperiously 
round, and pointed to the path that led homeward over the hill. 
“ Come and take your revenge now ; come and expose me before 
all of them. Then you shall stand upon the threshold, and see 
me as I walk away, like a beggar, down the avenue, with nothing 
in the world except the gown that I have on, and the knowledge 
that my angel is alive and waiting for her mother — where, you 
will have told me.” She waved her hand northward, towards 
the sea that lay hidden behind a rampart of yellowish fog. 
“ Patience, my darling ! Courage ! A little longer to wait, and 
there are happy years in store for us yet, together !” 

All other considerations were merged in that one thought. 
The flood-tide of awful rapture that had risen in her soul had 
swept away the landmarks set by years, had obliterated even 
the remembrance of her husband and his daughter, had extin- 
guished the fires of guilty terror and torturing dread of him, her 
enemy. 

“ Come !” she said, impatiently. “ Let what you have threat- 
ened to do be done. What does it matter to you whether you 
do it now or in a week from now ? Don’t you see that I am 
ready ? Don’t you know that my child is alive ? O good God ! 
alive and waiting for her mother !” 

“ Don’t make too sure of that,” said Hawley. 

Her eyes dilated, she let go her hold upon his sleeve. “ What 
does he mean ?” she whispered to herself. She pressed her hands 

12 - 


178 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


upon her bosom, to control her beating heart. She turned a 
searching look on Hawley. 

It burst in upon her then, 'like a blinding glare of insupport- 
able light, the cruel, pitiless truth. In spite of himself, he was 
ashamed. In spite of himself, he shuddered and turned cold at 
the shrill, wild cry that broke from her and went wailing out to 
sea. 

“ Come, you’ve got at the rights of it, I see,” he said. “ When 
I said before you that your child was alive, I lied. Why ? Be- 
cause I wanted to force you to a betrayal of yourself. To wring 
some admission from you. And I did. I got what I wanted. 
All’s fair in love and war. And this is war !” 

She looked at him strangely. She repeated after him, more 
strangely still, “ And this is war !” 

“ You provoked me with your coolness, I’ll acknowledge,” 
Hawley continued. “I said to myself, ‘I’ll make her^ive some 
sign before I’ve done.’ And I did, you know. There’s something 
of the red Indian in my nature, I’ve often thought. I like to see 
my enemies suffer. I like the task of moulding and bending and 
breaking an obstinate will under the weight of mine. Even when 
I was a boy at school — ” 

He broke off, suddenly, and his face grew to a dusky red. 
Perhaps a figure on crutches rose up before his mental vision, 
crying: “Here is some of your handiwork. Be proud of it 
when you look at me !” 

“ Look here,” he resumed, “ in doing what I did last night I 
may have overstepped the bounds of fairness — I don’t acknowl- 
edge that I have, you know. Still, I took you unawares. Not 
that I hadn’t a right to treat you as I did, because you have no 
right on your side to be dealt with openly. Look here, again. 
Suppose I were willing to come to terms with you, for good and 
all—” 

“ Wait !” said Mrs. Kavanjagh. She drew a letter from her 
pocket and held it out to him ; she spoke to him and looked at 
him, with a curious alteration of manner and tone. “ There can 
be no question of terms between us. A few days ago I asked 
you to give me time to raise a sum of money on my marriage 
settlement. Here is the reply from the firm of brokers whose 
advertisement I answered. They don’t want to have anything to 
do with me or my settlement. They refuse to advance a single 


BROUGHT TO BAY. 


T79 


penny on the deed without my husband’s written sanction to the 
proceedings. They actually suspect ray honesty ! They deli- 
cately imply that I may be, for all they know, attempting to 
procure money on false pretences.” She threw him the letter. 

“ Read the letter for yourself, before you go any further ; the 
letter may be responsible for an alteration in your views. Read 
the letter !” 

“ D n the letter !” said Hawley. He caught it and crum- 

pled it, contemptuously, in his hand. “ Haven’t I said to you 
that money alone won’t content me ? Do you think, supposing 
you were in a position to hand me over the whole sum as easily 
as I could toss this envelope back to you, that you would have 
done with me even then 

He tossed the letter back to her as he spoke. Out seaward 
the solid wall of fog had parted in twain, and a sudden gust of 
fresh salt wind came rushing through the cleft, across the rain- 
soaked land. It caught her garments and tugged at them, and 
cast a few leaden drops upon his face — the first of a coming 
shower. It caught the crumpled ball of paper and rolled it back 
to his feet, and past them ; then it vanished, as if the ground * 
had swallowed it. Her eyes followed it steadily till it was lost 
to sight. 

‘‘Go on!” 

“You provoked me last evening by that coolness of yours,” 
remarked Hawley, “ and did yourself — or narrowly escaped doing 
yourself — harm. Be wiser this time.” 

“Go on 1” 

“ I am going,” pursued Hawley, “ to make terms with you.” 

“ I refuse to accept your terms.” 

“ Before you have heard what they are ?” 

“ The terms will be like the maker, base and mean,” she re- 
joined. “Dishonorable, even in the eyes of the common crim- 
inal to whom they are proposed. I will not hear them.” 

“ You’re trying to irritate me again for some purpose of your 
own,” said Hawley, coolly, “ and I therefore insist on keeping 
my temper; You are mistaken in your anticipations regarding 
the nature of the compromise I offer you. You were a hand- 
some woman when I saw you first, you’re a handsome woman 
still; but for all that— you’re mistaken ! You prided yourself 
on your virtue when you acted as a gambling-house decoy ; you 


180 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


have reason, I don’t doubt, to pride yourself on it still. Go on 
doing so. Now will you hear my terras?” 

The gesture she made might have been one of assent or of dis- 
sent. He accepted it for the former, and went on : 

“I shall lighten my task of explanation considerably if I state 
at the beginning that the compromise I propose would be im- 
possible to carry out if I were a married man ! The younger 
son of an old family, surrounded by an unenviable halo of by- 
gone dissipations and bad debts, in the full enjoyment of health, 
strength, and an insuflScient income earned in a precarious way, 
doesn’t command the highest bidders in the matrimonial mar- 
ket. 

“ What has this to do with me ?” 

“ I’ll tell you,” answered Hawley. “ Your poor devil is as hard 
to suit with a wife, in his way, as a poor duke. He likes youth ; 
he prefers good looks and so forth, but money he must have, 
and plenty of it, if marrying is to help him out of his troubles. 
If he can get youth and good looks as well as money,' he’s a 
lucky devil ! Your step-daughter. Miss Rosalind Kavanagh, is 
«k a charming young lady. Your step-daughter. Miss Rosalind 
Kavanagh, has got fifteen thousand pounds to her fortune. Why 
shouldn’t I marry Miss Rosalind Kavanagh and square accounts 
with you that way ?” 

“ Is this your plan of compromise ?” 

“ In a nutshell,” rejoined Hawley. “ You see the part you 
will have to play in connection with it. Preach my perfec- 
tions. Persuade, cajole — women know how to do these things! 
Smooth sailing for you. Easy terms to be let off on !” 

“ Easy terms !” 

“ I don’t know that I shouldn’t be bringing myself down in 
connecting myself with your family,” resumed Hawley, taunt- 
ingly. “ But Rosalind has got none of your blood running in 
her veins, when all’s said. Once I’m married to Rosalind — ” 

“ Don’t say that name again 1” 

He looked at her contemptuously — he spoke to her con- 
temptuously. 

“ Are you mad ? I say, when Rosalind’s my wife — ” 

“ Don’t speak that name again ! I warn you, don’t I You 
had better not 1” 

The fury that had been smouldering in the woman had leaped 


BROUGHT TO BAY. 


181 


up into a raging flame. Its white reflection played upon her 
face. Its devilish light was in her eyes, as she came towards 
him, saying : 

“ You had better not !” 

“ By God !” said Hawley, “ I believe I had better not !” 

As he stepped back, she advanced upon him. As the sandy 
ground yielded and crumbled beneath his heel, he glanced over 
his shoulder, and with an oath sprang aside from the edge of 
the pit that yawned for him. 

“ You’re roused at last, and mischievous, are you ?” he^broke 
out, with another oath. “ Don’t try that game again ! It won’t 
do, Mrs. Kavanagh !” 

She looked at him, still with that murderous light shining in 
her eyes. She laughed a dreadful laugh. 

“You fool!” she said. “The bottom of the pit is shallow, 
the fall would only stun, not kill you ; there’s no water down 
there to smother you and hide you, dead, from living eyes. The 
grass by the edges is scanty ; the sand would keep the marks of 
trampling feet for days. Should ! choose that way out of all 
the ways there are to choose from, if I had it in my mind to 
get rid of you V' 

He blustered out another oath as he looked at her. But she 
had cowed him for the moment, and he knew that she knew it. 

“ You’re a clever actress,” he said, coarsely ; “ but you won’t 
put me out of counteuance with your stage airs, or turn my 
blood cold with your stage threats. I can afford to wait until 
you come out of your tantrums. When you do, look the thing 
coolly in the face. Snatch at the rope I’m throwing to you, be- 
fore you’re carried out to sea. Before you’re sucked down and 
swallowed up, and made an ugly thing for other ugly things to 
feed upon, down in the depths below. You know what waits 
for you there better thau I cau tell you.” 

The gravel crumbled under his heavy tread, the sodden turf 
gave back no sound as the footsteps of her enemy passed away 
from her over the hill. 


182 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

HOELL. 

Her rage died gradually out. A stupor came over her — the 
sullen stupor of utter despair. Her knees trembled under her 
so that it was impossible to walk. She sat down upon a stone 
that jutted out from the low cliff that rose up as a shelter upon 
her right. Her hands were folded on her lap. Heavy drops of 
rain fell upon her face and ran down in the channels where the 
tears were dry. 

A hand touched her. A voice sounded in her dulled ears. 

She lifted her heavy head. She recognized Hoell Brinnilow. 

Spent in mind and body as she was, it hardly occurred to her 
to wonder at his presence. The gleam of recognition that had 
dawned in her dim eyes faded out as she looked at him. Her 
head drooped once more upon her bosom. She was alone again 
with her wretchedness and her despair. 

He called to her ; he touched her shoulder again. “ Oh, 
speak to me,” he said, imploringly. “ What place is this for 
you ? Don’t you feel the cruel rain falling on you and drench- 
ing you ? Don’t you know how cold it is ? Pray, pray come 
home !” 

The familiar word struck an awakening chord in her jarred 
mind. She put her hand confusedly to her head. “Home? 
What home ? I haven’t any home ! Go away, and leave a poor 
lost woman alone I Go away and forget me, if you want to be 
kind. I’m trying to forget myself, and they won’t let me !” 

He shuddered as he looked at her. He appealed to her once 
more in an agony of solicitude and fear. “ Think — think what 
you are saying ! Rouse yourself — recall yourself, for God’s sake ! 
Oh, don’t look at me — don’t speak to me like that ! Oh, don’t 
— don’t cry ! Every tear falls like a drop of molten lead — on 
my heart!” 

His own tears dropped upon her hands as he bent over her. 
“ Crying !” she said, in the same toneless way. “ I’m not cry- 


HOELL. 


183 


ing. I can’t cry.” The dreadful mists that clouded her dazed 
brain lifted. Her eyes looked at him with a ray of compre- 
hension in them this time. “ Why have you come here ? Who 
set you on to watch and follow me? Is my horrible story the 
common talk ? Am I and my misery the theme for village gos- 
sip and drawing-room scandal already ? Oh, let me go ! Let me 
hide myself in the merciful sea, since there is no place left for 
me on earth !” 

He caught both her hands and held them as she rose wildly 
to her feet. He forced himself to speak to her with the firmness, 
the decision necessary, in that supreme moment, to recall her to 
herself. “ Hush, hush ! No one suspects you ; your secret is 
safe with nje. You shall hear how I came to guess it when you 
are calmer. Oh, if you knew what a load was lifted from my 
heart when the truth was made clear to me ! Only fancy ! I 
suspected you — you ! — of being guilty of the baseness of a com- 
mon intrigue — with that man ! Oh, me ! I have been wander- 
ing in a dreadful wilderness for days ! I have suffered the tort- 
ures of hell, when heaven was within reach of me! Oh, my 
friend ! Angel of my life, who found me in despair, and led me 
out of the darkness into the blessed light, forgive me and pity 
me. Forgive me, because I dared to doubt you. Pity me — be- 
cause I love you 1” 

His strength failed him as the irrevocable words escaped from 
his lips. His head grew giddy, and ringing noises sounded in 
his ears. A convulsive paroxysm of trembling seized upon his 
limbs. He stumbled and fell at her feet. His head dropped 
upon her knees. “ Is this death ?” he whispered, as his eyes 
closed. “ Is this death ?” 

In some strange way she gathered from his weakness the 
power that had deserted her. She put out her hand and touched 
him, and called him by his name. 

“ Not death, but life,” she answered. “ Live for my sake. 
What other friend have I to turn to, or to trust in now, but 
you ? Come, don’t lie there on the wet ground. Get up and 
think of a way to help me before it is too late.” 

Her words, her touch, had the desired effect. Hoell lifted his 
tear-stained face ; his dim eyes brightened. “ She asks me to 
help her ! She says I’m her only friend ! Think of a way ! I 
must think of a way I Money ! Money might help her, per- 


184 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


haps — and I have none ! She shakes her head ! Not money ! 
What then ?” He sighed and shook his own head despond- 
ingly. “ I don’t feel as if I could think by myself.” He ap- 
pealed to her piteously. “ Give me time ! My head spins round, 
my mind’s confused. Give me a little time !” 

She helped him as he struggled to his feet, all panting and di- 
shevelled ; she stooped for the crutch that had fallen beyond his 
reach and gave it into his hand. “Be a man,” she said, “in 
strength of mind if not in strength of body. You know my se- 
cret, you know the danger that threatens me ; you know by whom 
it is threatened. Help me, before I am past all help, or call your- 
self his friend, not mine.” 

“ His friend !” echoed Hoell. He laughed out, bitterly and 
harshly. “ Have you forgotten? Is it possible that you haven’t 
guessed ?” He struck himself fiercely upon his misshapen breast 
with his clinched hand. “ This would have been broad and straight 
and stalwart to-day but for him !” He pointed downward at the 
withered limbs that dangled helplessly between his supporting 
crutches. “These would have been sound and strong but for 
him, again ! Oh, look at me ! I’m not a man of God’s making 
— I’m a monster, fashioned for his whim. His hands stamped 
the seal of deformity on me — he raised up the dreadful barrier 
that shuts me out from all that makes life worth living to other 
men ! Curse him ! May the wrath qf God and my undying ha- 
tred blight him in this world, and sear and wither and distort his 
soul in the world to come, as my body is seared and withered and 
distorted in this! Your enemy is my enemy. Do you hear! 
D n him ! I wish he was dead ! I wish — !” 

She caught him by the shoulder ; she forced him to look at and 
to hear her. “Listen to me!” she said. “You have found out 
the way to save me already.” 

He said, “ How ? Tell me the way ?” 

The awful light that had sprung up in her when she faced Haw- 
ley upon the brink of the pit, a little while before, sprang up in her 
again as Hoell uttered those words. Her worn and sunken beau- 
ty came wonderfully back ; her youth was restored to her. Most 
beautiful, most terrible ; instinct with a radiance that was not the 
radiance of earth or of heaven, she stood before him, drew his 
eyes to hers, and mutely bade him read his answer there. 

He read it there. 


THE WAY TO SAVE HER. 


185 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE WAY TO SAVE HER. 

“‘Dreadful! Dreadful! You can’t mean it! — you don’t 
mean it!’ 

“ Her lips moved. Sounds never die, they say. In my ears — 
in my heart, as along the endless fibres of eternity, those two 
words spoken then are ringing now — those two words will ring 
forever. 

“ I reeled where I stood, and though I was wet with rain and 
shivering with cold, the blinding sweat ran down into my eyes. 
Strong, powerful men have been known to swoon like women be- 
fore now under the rapture of inexpressible joy or the revulsion of 
inexpressible horror. If my senses had failed at that moment there 
would have been excuse for me / 

“ She saw my horror in my face. She thought I shrank from 
her — from her ! The contempt of her look pierced me like a 
sword before the reproach of her words stung and bit and goaded 
me to madness. Contempt merited — reproach deserved. 

“ ‘You said you loved me just now. Oh ! what is your love 
worth if it doesn’t give me back my husband’s honor and my 
daughter’s happiness? What is it worth if it doesn’t save me? 
You said that you were ready to lay down your life for my sake, 
and you tremble at the mere thought of risk and danger braved 
for me! Idle words — empty words!’ She stretched her arras 
above her head, and cried out in an agony, ‘/ tell you if these 
hands of mine were as strong as my heart is^ he would he a dead 
man at this moment^ and I a free woman ! Do you hear 

“ I heard. I heard, too, my heart beating loudly. I heard my- 
self speak in a voice that was not like my own voice. I said, 

‘ You shall he a free woman P 

“ She turned to me. Something leaped up in me like a flame 
at her look. Whatever had got possession of her had got pos- 
session of me. A sweet, cruel, deadly intoxication, that tingled 


186 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


through every vein and fibre of me. A horrible, creeping chill, 
that caused ray flesh to shudder and the hair to stiffen on ray 
head. Ah ! I can understand now the nature of the irresistible 
fascination that leads the criminal, step by step, along the road that 
ends in — ! 

“ How long have I been sitting here, wet and cold, shivering 
and burning, staring at the black void of the fireless grate and 
thinking of the way ? 

“ The way to save you ! The way to make you a free woman 
again I Oh, my love — my love !” 

The night was very black and still. The threatened storm had 
broken some hours before. Amid the hissing of the scourging 
hail, and the rattle and roar of opposing cloud-forces, and the 
steely flashing of electric lances, it had wrought to an end, and 
passed, with rent and blackened mist-pennons trailing behind it, 
harmlessly out to sea. Not a sound broke the quiet of the sleep- 
ing house, except the ticking of the clock upon the mantel-piece, 
the dripping of the rain from the eaves without, the plash of wa- 
ter falling from overweighted branches into water underneath. 

He raised his haggard face and looked slowly round the famil- 
iar room. His glance rested upon a costly velvet frame hanging 
against the wall by the chimney-side— -the frame that had been 
made to hold his cherished collection of miniatures. And in that 
moment lay clear and plain before him the way for which he 
sought — the way upon which the originals of those faces on the 
wall had gone before him. And the hand of his house-keeper 
pointed it out. 

“ The paper ! The paper that puts life and death into its own- 
er’s hands ! Why did I burn the paper ? Why? the leering faces 
seem to ask. Oh, wicked, painted faces, hanging on the wall ! 
Did I see in her face, to-day, some faint reflection of a look that 
stamps you all members of one fearful sisterhood? O Power 
that is above us all, in mercy strike me blind before that terrible 
resemblance maddens me again ! Vile faces ! evil faces ! Tear 
them down and grind them into atoms before the terror of them 
and her and of myself comes upon me again and drives me wild !” 


THE WAY TO SAVE HER. 


187 


He struggled up out of his chair, and tore the heavy frame 
down from the wall and dashed it on the floor. He pounded at 
it furiously with his crutches till all semblance of humanity .was 
beaten out of the wicked faces, and fragments of wood, and 
splinters of glass, and bits of painted ivory were ground into the 
carpet and scattered over the room by the active crutches and 
the trailing feet. 

The work of destruction finished, he experienced a certain re- 
lief. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat of ter- 
ror and exhaustion froni his face. As he did so he fancied that 
he heard a sound of breathing outside the closed door. 

Then he crossed the room, quickly and quietly. He opened 
the door with a suddenness calculated to surprise any ordinary 
listener and looked out into the hall. It was empty. A light 
burned upon a table there. 

He took the light and went, as silently as his infirmity would 
allow, down a passage that ran at right angles with the hall. It 
led to his own room. Beyond his door a short flight of stairs 
led to the house-keeper’s bedroom. He fancied that a light glim- 
mered under the door, and shielded the lamp he held with his 
body, so as to be more sure. He hesitated another moment, and 
then made his way up the creaking stair. The unlocked door 
yielded to his hand as he turned the knob. He went in. 

The house-keeper’s room was empty of the house-keeper. A 
pewter candlestick, holding a tallow-candle nearly burned out, 
stood upon the chest of drawers. The dying flame leaped up in 
its socket as he closed the door behind him, and then sank down 
amid the foully-smelling, hissing grease, and went out suddenly. 
He held his own light high above his head and looked curiously 
about him. The room was carpetless and plainly furnished ; its 
walls were covered with an antique flock-paper, once red, now 
faded by age to a cinnamon color. The damp had loosened the 
paper from the plaster, so that it hung here and there in strips, 
and the draught from the open window stirred the loose pieces 
with a sound like the rustling of fallen leaves. The one or two 
chairs that the room contained were of heavy mahogany ; a serv- 
ant’s plain deal-box stood in a recess on one side of the fire- 
place ; the corresponding recess upon the other side was occupied 
by a clothes-press of some dark and shining wood. “Mother 
Endor’s box and Mother Endor’s clothes-press,” Hoell whispered 


188 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


to himself, as the shifting light brought these objects, one after 
another, into view. “ In which of them does she keep her 
secrets, I wonder, supposing that she has got any left to keep ? 
Which shall I try first ?” 

He completed his survey of the room as he spoke. Upon his 
left hand, midway between the window and the door, stood an 
old-fashioned wooden four-post bedstead — a plain, homely article 
of furniture, showing plain and homely and common even by 
contrast with the other articles of furniture in the room, lie 
spoke to himself again as his eyes rested on it. He whispered 
-^it seemed to him that some one else was whispering — “ Why 
not try there, first of all ?” and he moved to the bedside. He 
turned back the bed-clothes from the pillow, and lifted up the 
under sheet, bringing the wooden bed-frame plainly into view. 
He held the light close, and examined the surface of the wood 
intently. He shook his head then, and went round to the other 
side. 

This time, on turning back the clothes and lifting the under 
sheet, the surface of the wood presented an inequality in the 
grain. About four inches from the upper edge of the bed-frame 
a faint horizontal line appeared. Where it ended shorter lines 
dropped from it vertically, and an oblong was completed by the 
addition of a second horizontal line, parallel with the first, and 
suggesting the existence of a concealed drawen Hoell’s sal- 
low face wrinkled into a cunning smile. He tapped with his 
knuckles against the wood, within the boundary of those faint 
lines, and a hollow sound came back. He tried with his nails to 
pull open the drawer, but it resisted effectually. He took a 
little penknife from his pocket, and opened it, and inserted the 
blade between the edge of the drawer and the surrounding wood. 
The blade broke off short ; the handle dropped upon the floor. 
Mother Endor’s secrets were not to be got at that way. 

But Hoell’s patience was not exhausted yet. He considered 
a moment, and then pushed back the mattress from the side of 
the bed. Setting down the lamp he held upon a chair close by, 
he passed his hand cautiously along the edge of the bed-frame. 
Something sharp, yet blunter than a nail, scratched him as he 
did so. A little point of steel glistened in the light as he with- 
drew his hand ; a dusty scrap of worsted attached to it arrested 
his eye. He took the loose end cautiously between his finger 


THE STORY— CONTINUED. 


189 


and thumb. He pulled, and a long steel knitting-needle, rusty 
in some places and bright in others, rose from its wooden socket 
at the bidding of his hand. As it did so the drawer that it 
had held in place moved out slowly, and he looked in. 

Tlie drawer held nothing besides dust and flue, except an or- 
dinary medicine bottle of dark-blue glass. Empty and dry ? No ; 
full and heavy ! And as he lifted it from its resting-place and 
held it to the light, he saw before him clearly the way that was 
to lead him to the inevitable end. 

He thrust the bottle into his breast and closed the drawer. 

He took his lamp and turned to go out of the room. 

As he did so his eyes encountered the dull-black eyes of 
Pleasant Weather. The house-keeper had been standing behind 
her master, watching him, as he rifled the secret hiding-place in 
her beebee’s bedstead, of the bottle of Life-and-Death. 


CHAPTER XVHI. 

THE STORY CONTINUED IN ANOTHER EXTRACT FROM GEORGE 
KAVANAGH’S JOURNAL. 

“ Selbrigg Hall, September 29th. 

“The last entry made in my Journal bears the date of nearly 
a week ago. Anxious days — weary days — have filled up the in- 
terval. Mrs. Kavanagh has been seriously ill. A chill incautiously 
incurred, a neglected cold, have been succeeded in her case by a 
severe bronchial attack, attended by a degree of fever and an 
excess of physical prostration sufficient to alarm her family and 
cause her medical attendant considerable anxiety. But I am 
happy enough to record that all danger is past, and the patient 
is on a fair way to complete convalescence. 

“ Sir Philip has haunted the house from morning until night, 
on the chance of snapping up such stray crumbs of Rosalind’s 
society as my niece — who, I need not say, has been constant and 
devoted in her attendance upon the invalid — has been able to 
afford him. Of Mr. Hawley we have seen nothing since the night 
of the 23d. Business connected with his approaching depart- 
ure from England called him suddenly to London upon the fol- 


190 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


lowing night. Business still detains him there. But Sir Philip 
has given us to understand that his friend returns in time to be 
present at the ball which is to be given at The Chase in honor of 
its master’s approaching marriage to the prettiest and the sweet- 
est girl in all the country round. And the ball takes place on 
the evening of the day after to-morrow. 

“ With regard to this same ball, I have undergone, and am 
undergoing, a considerable amount of suffering, mental and phys- 
ical. My presence at this entertainment is vehemently insisted 
on by all the persons intimately concerned with it. Let me con- 
fess, to these sympathetic pages, that the social abomination 
known as an evening dress-suit hasn’t found a place in my limited 
travelling-wardrobe for twenty years, and that if anybody had 
suggested to me that the deficiency would be remedied in twenty 
years more, I should have shaken my head. But now Fate has 
decreed, and the family credit demands, that upon this special 
occasion I should discard the easy-going garments of vagabond- 
ism, and appear before the eye of society clothed in the magpie 
garb of complete civilization. To this end, therefore, I have 
submitted myself to the manipulative mercies of the ninth part 
of a burgess of Norwich. The clothes have come home — I have 
tried them on — and the result is uniformly successful. I shall 
look as much like a waiter as any other man in the room, except- 
ing that my complexion gives me the appearance of a waiter re- 
turned to resume the round of his usual avocations — say after a 
holiday trip to Botany Bay. 

“ One other guest will be even more out of place at the ball 
than myself. In spite of her recent illness, notwithstanding her 
present condition of barely-attained convalescence, my sister-in- 
law has set her mind upon being present. Expostulations are 
useless. Mrs. Kavanagh has put her foot down, and that hand- 
some member is no more to be moved by arguments, persuasions, 
or dismal prophecies of future ill resulting to its owner, than if 
it belonged to a granite Memnon. 

October 1st. 

“ The day of the ball. A sunny, genial, cloudless day. No 
threatenings of rain to damp the evenings dissipation. Pheas- 
ant shooting in the morning, tennis in the afternoon. My niece 
has carried out her threat of teaching me the game. Here is a 
new version of an old proverb: ‘You may drag a middle-aged 


THE STORY— CONTINUED. 


191 


man to the courts, but you can’t make a player of him !’ Rosa- 
lind has given me up in despair. Sir Philip has taken my stiff- 
jointed, elderly place. I can hear their voices and their laughter, 
and the brisk thump of the ball against the racquets, as I sit 
here writing in my room up-stairs. 

“ I left Mrs. Kavanagh sitting in a basket-chair on the terrace, 
watching the players. She was wrapped in a light shawl. The 
traces of recent illness are visible in the sharpened outlines of 
her features and the pallor of her face; but the character of 
her beauty has not deteriorated, though it may have somewhat 
changed. Upon my life, knowing as well as I do that there is a 
change in her, I can’t define the nature of it. I can only main- 
tain . . . 

“ Hoell was with her. I am fanciful enough to imagine that 
an alteration, as subtle, as indescribable as the alteration I have 
detected in Mrs. Kavanagh, has taken place in him. 

“ Mr. Hawley has returned from London. Having presuma- 
bly settled his business, it may be reasonably expected that Mr. 
Hawley’s visit to The Chase will terminate — that he will be leav- 
ing England for that remote quarter of the globe where his qual- 
ities are appreciated and his services valued — in a day or two. 
I have forgotten to mention that Mr. Hawley accompanied Sir 
Philip when Sir Philip drove over here this afternoon — that Mr. 
Hawley is here now. 

“ Let me ease my overloaded mind of a little of its prejudice. 
Absence has not endeared Philip’s friend to the writer of these 
lines — I dislike the fellow even more thoroughly and sincerely 
than I did when he went away ! I was conscious of a demoral- 
ized sensation of gratification in the knowledge that I had made 
myself disagreeable to the object of that stubborn dislike of 
mine a few minutes ago. 

“ In a word, I told him of my niece’s engagement, anticipat- 
ing the revelation which infallibly must, before half a dozen 
hours have gone over our heads, be made by somebody else. 
Rosalind’s prohibition has been duly observed by Philip. Philip, 
with the dread of her condign displeasure upon him, has even 
succeeded in keeping ‘My Lady’s’ tongue quiet. The news 
came as a complete surprise to Philip’s friend, and, unless I 


192 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


am very much mistaken, the surprise was the reverse of a pleas- 
ant one. 

“ ‘ The devil you say so !’ he ejaculated, and gave a whistle. 
He put his hands in his pockets and kicked a harmless little 
stool that had happened to get in the way quite viciously in the 
ribs. Not another word, good or bad, fell from his lips ; his 
heavily -moulded features became sullen and lowering. He 
turned his back on me without a word, and strolled away to 
the other end of the terrace. The annoyance is easily to be ac- 
counted for. His friend has kept secret from him, without any 
potent reason fordoing so, the knowledge of the great and im- 
portant change which is about to take place in his life — his 
friend has left him to gather that knowledge from the lips of a 
chance acquaintance. Natural enough that Hawley should re- 
sent what a more sensitive man than he might regard as a slight. 
Natural enough! 

“ A knock at the door. One of the servants with a message : 

“ Miss Kavanagh’s love, and the tea’s waiting. Will I come 
down-stairs ?” 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

‘‘ I WENT down-stairs. The little round table had been set 
out upon the terrace and crowned with all the dainty parapher- 
nalia that appertains to the sacred rite of afternoon tea. The 
game of tennis had just come to an end. My niece, with her 
obedient lover following at her heels, came to assume command 
of the kettle. The rest of us were gathered about. Something 
of the happy, homely, placid charm that I had missed of late 
I knew again. The incubus of constraint weighed no longer 
heavily upon me ; I felt at peace with all the world, and friendly 
towards even Hawley, until I looked at him. 

“ The sullen, lowering expression was still upon his face. He 
had deposited his big heavy body in a wicker chair. He was 
tilting another chair backward and forward in one of his big 
strong hands. His lips went through the motions of a whistle, 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


193 


but no sound came from them ; his eyes were bent heavily and 
broodingly upon the pavement at his feet. 

“ As my niece, in the course of her duties about the tea-table, 
looked at him ; as she paused with suspended sugar-tongs upon 
the verge of the tea-maker’s inevitable inquiry, Sir Philip stop- 
ped her. 

“ ‘ Don’t ask Hawley whether he takes milk and sugar,’ said 
Philip. ‘Don’t offer him any tea. He’s capable of appreciat- 
ing all the blessings of civilization but that blessing. Something 
cool and fizzing, squirted out of a syphon into a tall tumbler, 
with something that doesn’t fizz in the bottom of it, is his idea 
of a drink that cheers without inebriating. Isn’t it, old fellow ?’ 

“Hawley, thus addressed, came out of his brown study heav- 
ily and unwillingly. He answered his friend sulkily and abrupt- 
ly, ‘ Tea ? Thanks, I don’t drink tea. Tea’s not in my line.’ 

“Anticipating the hospitable suggestion that was naturally to 
be expected from the lady of the house, I rose from my seat. 
The nearest way to the drawing-room bell lay through the draw- 
ing-room window. I was about to take that way when Hoell 
interposed. 

“ ‘ Stop ! Don’t ring for the butler.’ He addressed himself, 
with a return of the old officious eagerness to be of use, to Haw- 
ley. ‘ Half a dozen paces from here to the dining-room window,’ 
he said. ‘ Half a dozen paces from the window to the dining- 
room sideboard. Plenty of materials on that sideboard for the 
compounding of the cool yet potent mixture that’s more in your 
line than tea. As a compouitder of the squash alcoholic — widely 
different to the acid temperance variety of the beverage — the 
present speaker defies competition. And the present speaker 
begs to place his services unreservedly at your disposal.’ 

“ He got out of his chair, without waiting for Hawley’s reply, 
with such haste and eagerness that he stumbled and would have 
fallen if I had not caught him by the elbow. Slight as the 
shock was that accompanied the mishap, it was sufficient to un- 
nerve him — to bring the perspiration out in dull beads upon his 
sallow temples, and to cause the hand with which he beckoned 
Hawley and pointed out the way to tremble visibly. 

“ No one opposed his wish. If others felt as I felt towards 
him at that moment, they recognized in Hoell’s whimsical pro- 
posal a fresh testimony to the goddess of his heart and the gen- 
13 


194 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


erosity of his nature. Slight as the offer of service might have 
been considered, it was significant, in my eyes, of Hoell’s he- 
roic determination to bury the wrongs endured in the cruel past 
in deep oblivion — to hold out again, and once for all, the hand 
of manly forgiveness to his old oppressor. Heartily admiring 
him, as I did at that moment, I involuntarily glanced towards 
Mrs. Kavanagh, seeking in her face a response to the feeling that, 
I doubt not, was expressed in my own. I met with none. The 
deadly paleness of her complexion, the fixed and awful tensity of 
the look which I encountered, nearly betrayed me into an open 
expression of alarm. But Hawley spoke at that instant and 
stopped me. 

“ ‘ Upon my soul, I’m obliged to you !’ he returned, speaking 
to Hoell, but not looking at him. ‘ Upon my soul, I don’t know 
why you should take the trouble !’ 

“ He considered with himself a moment, sitting in his chair. 
Then he got up and shook himself, after the fashion of a clumsy 
Newfoundland dog. Peg, peg ! went Hoell’s crutches over the 
old-fashioned pavement of red tiles. Tramp, tramp ! sounded 
Hawley’s heavy footsteps, keeping time. Together they entered 
the dining-room by one of the windows that open on the ter- 
race, and were lost to sight.” 

END OF THE EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL. 


CHAPTER XX. 

ON THE BRINK. 

The cloth was already laid for dinner. A man-servant was in 
the act of replacing in the centre of the table a heavy old-fash- 
ioned silver flower-stand, laden with late roses, trailing ferns, and 
sweet - smelling verbena. He took his empty plate-basket and 
withdrew as the gentlemen entered the room. 

The sombre cloud that rested upon Hawley showed no signs 
yet of lifting away. He sat down, sullenly and wearily, in the 
old-fashioned high-backed chair usually occupied by the master 


ON THE BRINK. 


195 


of the house. He rested his elbow upon the table and his head 
upon his hand. He looked out, absently, beyond the terrace into 
the garden. 

The sideboard, with its glittering array of silver and cut-glass, 
was behind him. He heard the .dull sound of Hoell’s crutches 
moving over the carpet. He heard the clinking of decanters 
and the cool tinkling of lumps of ice against the sides of the 
tumbler. He heard the hissing of the aerated liquid as it foamed 
into the glass. He heard the lumps of sugar drop in one by 
one, and the sound of the spoon stirring the cool drink, as the 
crippled man completed his self-appointed task. But, under the 
influence of the strange lethargy that possessed him, he never 
stirred or looked round. 

The crutches stumped woodenly over the carpet again. They 
halted behind his chair. He started and lifted his heavy eyes. 
He took from the hand that offered it on a little salver a tall 
tumbler, frothing and full to the brim. He lifted it to his lips, 
but before it touched them he lowered it, and his hand sank un- 
til it rested on his knee. He rested his head on his other hand, 
again, and looked out over the garden as absently as before. 

“ Come, come,” said Hoell’s voice behind him. “ Don’t you 
drink?” 

Hawley roused himself. “ My head’s muddled ; I’m not my- 
self to-day.” He burst into a short laugh. “Come, I’ll put a 
case to you,” he said. “ Suppose a man has set his heart on doing 
a certain thing. Suppose his purpose has been a settled purpose, 
and his determination a fixed determination, for years — a dozen 
years or more. And suppose it to have come to this, that when 
he has only to put out his hand to effect that purpose and carry 
out that determination, he finds that he doesn’t know his own 
mind. Should you call that man a confounded idiot or shouldn’t 
you ? If you did, you’d be in the right.” He ended with an- 
other short laugh. He raised the tumbler to his lips again. 
“ Obliged to you !” he said, and nodded. “ Your health !” He 
drank. “There’s a queer taste about this brew of yours. No; 
on second thoughts I’m mistaken. The queerness is about me !” 
He emptied the tumbler, and set it on the table with a bang. He 
got out of the chair in another moment, and stretched himself. 
“ By George !” he said. “ This stuff of yours is the right sort of 
stuff, after all. No more muddle — no more indecision — my 


196 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


head’s as clear as a bell. I know what I’ve got to do — and I’m 
going to do it !” 

The servant re-entered the room. He addressed himself respect- 
fully to Hawley. 

“A message from Sir Philip Lidyard, sir. He’s waiting with 
the mare and the dog-cart for you.” 

“The mischief he is !” retorted Hawley. “Say all right, I’m 
coming, will you ?” He followed the man to the door. He looked 
back over his shoulder as he set his foot upon the threshold. 
Yielding to some secret overmastering impulse, he turned back 
into the room. 

The crippled man sat in the chair that he had vacated. His 
arms hung listlessly over the arms of the chair ; his head was 
sunken on his shapeless breast. The sallow color of his com- 
plexion had faded to an ashen gray, his eyes stared vacantly at a 
spot upon the carpet at his feet. Slight spasms of trembling 
shook him from time to time. 

Hawley came near to him — called him by his name. As Hoell 
moved, slightly, and turned his face towards him, the other re- 
coiled. 

“Let me call somebody — let me get you something. You’re 
faint — you’re in pain ! What is it ?” 

Hoell shaded his face with his hand. He shook his head from 
behind that shelter. “ Nothing !” he said, faintly and brokenly. 
“I want nothing. Heat overcomes me sometimes like this. 
It’s the heat.” 

Hawley came a step or two nearer. “ Look here !” he broke 
out, eagerly and hesitatingly. “ I want to speak to you, Brinni- 
low. There’s something — ” He hesitated again. “ Something 
I’ve got to say. It’s about the time when we were boys to- 
gether at school. It’s got to do with something that happened 
there. Something that left its mark upon you for life. And 
upon me, too !” 

The other answered back, in a voice that was little better than 
a whisper: “What of it?” 

“ I’m not a sensitive fellow, but a rough fellow,” Hawley went 
on. “ I’m not given to wasting my time in regretting this, that, 
and the other action, done in the past. Done once is done for 
always. No use crying over spilt milk, and so forth. But if 
you’ll believe me, what I did then I’ve repented — ever since! 


ON THE BRINK. 


197 


If it had been possible to undo what I did that day, I’d have 
undone it ! If it cost me twenty years of my life ! Before God !” 

He struck the chair vehemently with his heavy hand as he 
spoke, and the huddled-up figure in it seemed to grow more 
distorted and shapeless than ever. 

“ When we met, with the memory of that black wrong be- 
tween us; when you gave your hand to me that night, it cut 
me, though I’m not a feeling fellow,” went on Hawley, “ to think 
that you could show yourself such a generous fellow in spite of 
everything. And I’m going to ask you to be more generous 
still ! I’m going to ask you to give me your hand again — I’m 
going to ask you to say, ‘ Hawley, I forgive you !’ ” 

No answer from the crouching figure in the chair. 

“ It’s a good deal to ask,” continued Hawley, “but it means a 
good deal to me. One of these days, when I’m lying — who knows 
where? — waiting for the end that some people think is only the 
beginning, I shall be glad to remember that those words were 
spoken, and you mightn’t be sorry, afterwards, yourself, to think 
you said them ! So — ” 

He was coming nearer with his own hand outstretched, when 
the figure in the chair sprang up and warded him off — in terror, 
and with loathing, as it seemed — and shrieked out, “ No ! No !” 

Hawley went, without another word, to the door. He opened 
it. Upon the threshold he looked back for the last time. “ Nat- 
ural — only natural !” he said to himself, audibly. “ I should have 
done the same thing — if I had been in his place ! Better far to 
be in his place than in mine to-day !” The door closed softly 
behind him. He was gone. 

Hoell’s arms fell helplessly upon the table. His head dropped 
upon them. He cried out in agony, “ Oh, Hawley ! Hawley !” 
He broke out into an hysterical passion of sobs and tears. 

Some one entered noiselessly by the window. Some one 
came to him, silently and swiftly. Some one touched him on 
the shoulder — Mrs. Kavanagh ! He knew who it was even be- 
fore he raised his heavy head and turned his marred and swollen 
face upon her. And the breathless interrogation that her look 
conveyed was answered by him, mutely, with a gesture of the 
hand. “Have you done it?” might have been the question, and 
the answer, “ Yes I Oh, God forgive me ! Yes !” 


198 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


She bleached and shuddered and shrank from him. He saw 
it with a pitiful surprise. “ She’s afraid of me !” he said to him- 
self, drearily. “ She shudders at the touch of me ! She, who 
made me what I am !” 

She mastered herself with a visible effort. She drew near to 
him again. “ ‘ Afraid of you ?’ I’m not afraid of you ! What 
are you thinking of, to fancy — ?” She stopped, as the creeping 
horror gained upon her once more. She whispered, with white 
lips and almost inaudibly, “ Will it be soon ? How long before 
— that — happens ?” 

From the distance came faintly the chime of a clock, striking 
the hour of seven. It was a musical clock, and upon the last 
stroke followed a tinkling little melody. In the stillness not a 
note of it was lost. As the tiny outgush of sound subsided, he 
answered her, with a catching of the breath, “ In three hours.” 

Her arms dropped heavily at her sides. She repeated after 
him, mechanically, “ In three hours.” She considered a moment. 
“How many minutes are there in three hours?” she muttered to 
herself. “ A hundred and eighty ! How many seconds?” She 
raised her hands ; she counted on her fingers. “ It’s like a hor- 
rible sum !” she burst out, loudly and recklessly. “ Take three 
hours from time. Take a hundred and eighty minutes from 
three hours. Take so many seconds out of a hundred and 
eighty minutes. And take him from life ! Ha, ha, ha !” 

Hoell rose up out of his chair. He moved to her side. He 
caught her hand in his, and crushed it in a gripe so strenuous 
that it forced from her a cry of pain. “ Be silent ! Do you 
want to drive me crazy ? Do you want to make me hate you ? 
You, whom I — ” He let go her hand. The frenzy died out of 
his eyes. “ I must be crazy already to speak to you in such a 
tone !” he said, humbly. “ Could I be in my right senses and 
hurt you as I did just now ? Make allowances for me. Forgive 
me, and let me take your hand again. I won’t hurt it this 
time.” 

She gave him her hand. He took it and lifted it to his lips, 
and put it to his heart ; he sighed bitterly and looked at her 
with sad, puzzled wonder. “ I don’t understand it !” he broke 
out, “ I don’t understand it ! Try again ! Speak to me — let me 
hear your voice !” 

She spoke a few words. He listened, and shook his head. 


THE JOURNAL-CONTINUED. 


199 


“ Do you know what your voice has been to me since the day I 
heard it first ? Heavenly music sounding in my ears ! Shall I 
tell you what your touch has been to me? Fire, subtle, electric 
fire, running along my veins to thrill and burn and sting and 
madden me with unspeakable rapture ! You spoke to me just 
now — and the music was all jarred and broken ; you touch me 
— at this moment — and your touch strikes a chill to my heart 
that is like the chill of death !” He dropped her hand for the 
second time. He whispered to himself, “ Is this retribution ? 
Has my punishment begun already — and in that way ?” He 
paused, as though waiting for a reply, and then whispered again, 
as though echoing the answer made to him by some unearthly 
voice, “ Yes P 

He moved from her then, with another bitter sigh. Slowly, 
painfully, he halted to the door. He went out without a back- 
ward look and left her. 


CHAPTER XXL 
THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

‘ “ Selbrigg Hall, October 5th. 

“We dined that evening — I refer to the evening upon which 
the ball took place — at half-past seven instead of, as usual, at 
eight. The ladies withdrew before dessert, in the interests of 
their toilets. It is enough to say that I had inducted myself 
into the dress-suit made by the Norwich tailor, and that I was 
to the full as uncomfortable in it as I had expected to be. But 
the family credit was upheld, and the persons whom I had de- 
sired to gratify were gratified, and so my sufferings were not 
undergone for nothing. When my niece reappeared in the 
drawing-room, fresh from the hands of her maid, and looking, 
if possible, more charming than ever, in the newest of new ball 
dresses, she subjected me to a rigorous inspection, and pro- 
nounced h^r favorable verdict on my appearance in the follow- 
ing words: ‘You are an old darling, and look perfectly civilized 
and distinguished enough to set all the young ladies in the 
county dying to dance with you. Don’t be surprised if, before 


200 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


the evening is over, I insist upon dancing with you myself.’ 
She gave my cravat a final twitch, took her bouquet — Philip’s 
present — which I had obediently held while the finishing touches 
were being conferred upon my toilet, thanked me with a kiss, 
and fluttered to the looking-glass. She surveyed the delightful 
image that confronted her there with an ingenuous delight in 
her own fresh youth and beauty that made me smile. ‘Do I 
look nice V she burst out, frankly, catching the reflection of the 
smile in the glass. ‘Does my dress become me? Ah, your eyes 
said yes, just now ; I should know better than to believe you 
if your tongue said no !’ She slipped her hand confidentially 
underneath my arm and raised her lips to my ear. ‘ Shall I tell 
you why I have taken so much pains with myself?’ she whispered. 

‘ Shall I tell you why it pleases me to see in your face that my 
trouble has not been wasted? There will be plenty of pretty 
young ladies at the ball to-night, and your niece would be glad, 
for her own vain reasons, to look prettier than the prettiest of 
them all. Why ? Because I don’t want Philip to repent of his 
choice when he looks at other girls — I want him to congratulate 
himself upon it when he looks at me. Remember this. Uncle 
George, and when we are all packed into the carriage, in which 
we have got to drive three miles to our destination, be careful 
with your legs, for heaven’s sake !’ She kissed me again, upon 
my undertaking to keep those extremities in a state of rigid 
subordination, caught up her wonderful skirts, and waltzed out 
of the room in a swirl of lace-edged petticoats and a burst of 
exuberant good spirits. I followed more sedately. We found 
the carriage already at the door, and my brother engaged, with 
the assistance of the butler, in struggling into his overcoat. He 
shook his head at me, as the operation was completed ; he pro- 
tested, in the tone of a man who has unjustly been deprived of 
his after-dinner slumber, against the fashionable lateness of the 
hour fixed for the commencement of the ball. ‘Dreadful nui- 
sances, these night entertainments! If we were as sensible in 
these days as our great-grandfathers were in theirs, we should be 
arriving home about this time, instead of setting out.’ Upon 
which his daughter responded, taking him familiarly by the chin 
with one hand, while she turned up his coat-collar with the 
other : 

“ ‘ And then I should be wanting to sit up all night and talk 


THE JOURNAL -CONTINUED. 20l 

everything over, as my great-great-grandmothers used to do. So 
think yourself lucky, darling, that you'werh born in the present 
century instead of in the one before it, and don’t grumble any 
more.’ 

“ She turned her bright, laughing face to me, leaving a reflec- 
tion of its brightness on my brother’s, and bent her shoulders to 
receive the light wrap which I had taken from the servant, as 
Mrs. Kavanagh appeared at the upper end of the hall. She wore 
a magniflcent dress of white velvet, with glimpses of silver em- 
broidery about the bosom, and in the folds of the skirt, and upon 
the borders of the sweeping train. She was wearing all her dia- 
monds, and while her beauty impressed me more powerfully than 
it had ever done before, it made me think — I can’t tell why — of 
a pale, heaving sea, with the moonlight upon it, brooding in the 
troubled silence that prevails before the breaking of a storm. Her 
elderly maid followed, carrying a fur-lined cloak upon her arm, 
which she seemed to be vainly endeavoring to persuade her mis- 
tress to put on. But Mrs. Kavanagh took no more heed of her, 
or of any of us, than if she had been a woman walking in a dream. 
In silence she passed through our midst and entered the carriage. 
Rosalind and her father followed. As I was about to enter, the 
elderly maid thrust the cloak upon me. 

“ ‘ It’s as much as my mistress’s life is worth to go out with- 
out her wraps on a chill night like this,’ the woman said, dogged- 
ly. ‘ Try and persuade her, sir, to put it on.’ 

I got into the carriage, duly observing my promise to Rosa- 
lind with regard to the disposal of my legs. As the vehicle moved 
on, the light from the lodge, flashing in upon us as we drove 
through the lower gates, showed me, for an instant, plainly, my 
sister-in-law’s face. It was curiously rigid and set, and with the 
same strange air of preoccupation upon her that I had noticed be- 
fore, she was staring out of the carriage- window. Recalling the 
scruples of her maid, I touched my niece’s hand and gave the cloak 
to her. She attempted to draw it round Mrs. Kavanagh’s bare 
shoulders. My sister-in-law submitted absently to the daughterly 
attention, and let it drop from them again. Rosalind attempted 
to remonstrate. Mrs. Kavanagh’s only answer was to let down 
the window. She did this with the impatience of a woman suf- 
fering from unbearable heat, though, in leaning forward to assist 
her, my hand touched hers, and the deadly coldness of its contact 


202 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


almost startled me. Nobody spoke — I don’t know why — during 
the remainder of the drive. It could not have been completed 
in a silence more profound if we had been bound to a funeral 
instead of to a merrymaking. 

“ Lidyard Chase, in its gala aspect, presented features in com- 
mon with other establishments similarly abandoned to festivity. 
There was a crowd in the hall, there was a crush upon the stair- 
case, a mob upon the landing, and a scrimmage in the ball-room. 
The county had been invited to do honor to the occasion, and 
the county had come with its wives and daughters. The best- 
bred backs and bosoms to be found within a circuit of fifty miles 
in extent were upon view, and scarcely a dress was to be seen but 
upon its own mute evidence might be judged to have trailed 
through the best part of a London season. 

“ ‘ My Lady ’ had done the thing thoroughly. The avenues were 
tastefully illuminated ; the rooms were beautifully decorated ; the 
conservatories were converted into shady fiirtation bowers, agree- 
ably warmed by hot-air pipes, and prudently cooled with blocks 
of ice. So many young people were pursuing botanical investi- 
gations in these quarters that the presence of a middle-aged per- 
son like myself seemed unnecessary. I went back to the ball- 
room, and amused myself by looking about me. 

“ The band was playing a German waltz, but the waltz that was 
popular in my young days has gone out of date like everything 
else. Some of these couples cultivated a swooping movement, 
others skated, while many went as if on rockers. But the step 
most in vogue in this present year of grace can hardly be an ex- 
hausting one, because it is almost imperceptible. Its votaries 
make little corners for themselves — miniature ball-rooms in quiet 
nooks — and pursue the cult therein with grave, unsmiling enthu- 
siasm. A modern young lady doesn’t put her hand upon her 
partner’s shoulder, as she used to do in those obsolete times that 
I remember, and dance as if she liked it. No! She curls about 
his elbow ; she reposes upon his bosom ; sbe twines herself about 
him as the ivy of the simile twines about the oak, and lets her- 
self be carried very slowly round and round in the wrong direc- 
tion, to the accompaniment of the band. 

“ I leaned against the wall and looked on idly at the revolving 
dancers, the animated groups of talkers, the serried ranks of chap- 
erons and wall-flowers ranged along the border-land of crimson car- 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


203 


pet that framed in the shining floors, while old memories arranged 
and rearranged themselves before my mental vision like the con- 
stantly shifting glass patterns in a kaleidoscope. Foremost rose the 
image of Rosalind’s dead mother, in all the tender grace and sweet- 
ness of her early girlhood, and I found my heart beating when, for 
an instant, the slight flgure of my niece passed before me, leaning 
on her lover’s arm, as it used to beat long, long ago at the merest 
hint of the presence, at the slightest sound of the voice, or the 
fragrance of the flowers worn in the dress of the object of my 
boyish adoration. Heaven only knows how far away I was from 
the present when an exuberant voice addressed me, a combina- 
tion of perfumes overwhelmed me, a ponderous feminine pres- 
ence overshadowed me; a large crimson fan, adorned with in- 
crusted masses of a black, shiny substance, vaguely suggestive of 
smashed beetle, tapped me smartly on the arm. I looked up, and 
knew that I had fallen into the clutches of Lady Lidyard. 

“ Courtesy towards my hostess forbade my avoiding the doom 
which I felt to be impending by instant flight. I bore with meek- 
ness the brunt of the reproaches that were heaped upon my head 
for neglect of the duties incumbent upon me as a bachelor and a 
dancing man. I submitted to be borne along in ‘ My Lady’s ’ train, 
in a condition of open-eyed somnambulism which rendered active 
volition impossible. I returned to consciousness with a hazy vis- 
ion of something yellow before me, and a distinct impression that 
I was engaged to dance a quadrille with Lady Lutterworth. 

“ Over the greater part of what ensued I must beg permission 
to draw the veil of the conventional novelist. It is enough to 
say that I went into that quadrille a sturdy, self-respecting indi- 
vidual of middle age and independent opinions, and came out of 
it a comparatively crushed and broken creature. Mrs. Dabb- 
Hendley opposed us. Her partner was a bald-headed personage 
of bland aspect, who had previously been pointed out to me as 
one of the Chief Commissioners of Lunacy for the county. It 
struck me as, in the intervals of the figure, I glanced across and 
became aware that Mrs. Dabb-Hendley was explaining her views, 
that he must have made a very good commissioner indeed. For 
he accepted all her expressed opinions with regard to the political 
and social ruin in which the United Kingdom must infallibly be- 
come involved in the course of a century or so, if its entire fe- 
male population cannot be awakened to a sense of the necessity 


204 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


of scotching the snake, precisely as he might have accepted the 
assurances upon the authority of a demented female patient belong- 
ing to the County Asylum, that she was Pope Joan, and the crack 
of doom might be confidently expected on the day after to-morrow. 

“ Lady Lutterworth was not behindhand in the matter of her 
own views. I learned from her how many ladies are prepared, 
in the event of Home Rule ultimately getting its own way, to 
rise upon their domestic hearths and expire in the cause of order, 
and the effort to stem the torrent of Radicalism that may then be 
expected to overwhelm our native country, with the banner of the 
Daffodil in their grasp, and the clarion cry, ‘ Crown and Consti- 
tution,’ upon their lips. It was wonderful to see how she and 
Mrs. Dabb-Hendley disapproved of each other, and how they 
mutually enjoyed the manifestation of that disapproval. It was 
more than wonderful to see how other people kept their beads 
and their places when I got so inextricably involved in the laby- 
rinths of that quadrille. 

“ I have no distinct recollection of how it began or where it 
ended. I know that I took Lady Butterworth for a short walk, 
and then turned her round by both hands upon the pivot of her 
own majestic proportions, while the bald-headed Commissioner 
of Lunacy did the same by Mrs. Dabb-Hendley. I have an in- 
distinct recollection of taking both these ladies for another short 
walk to see the commissioner, and subsequently of standing iso- 
lated, with an irresistible inclination to twist one leg round the 
other, while he conducted them on another brief excursion to see 
me. Complete delirium overtook me at the juncture of the La- 
dies’ Chain. The more the others endeavored to set me right, the 
more I blundered. It was an inexpressible relief to me, in the 
state of bodily and mental prostration at which I had arrived, 
when the last figure came to an end. I deposited Lady Butter- 
worth upon the nearest seat and escaped from the ball-room. 

“ The hall-door stood widely open as I came down-stairs. One 
glance served to show me that the solitude and quiet I wanted 
were not to be got by going out that way. Grooms were gos- 
siping, while they waited, with the servants of the house ; car- 
riages were crashing to and fro upon the gravel of the drive. 
The glass doors at the other end of the hall stood open, too — I 
could feel the cold draught from them blowing on my face. I 
went out by the glass doors. 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


205 


“ The stillness and the darkness of the night were intensified 
by their contrast with the scene I had just quitted. Imperfectly 
acquainted as I was with the topography of the house and 
grounds, I could only feel my way. The gravel which at first 
had crackled under my feet gave way to velvety turf. A fiight 
of steps succeeded. I went down the steps and found myself on 
the gravel again. High, square-cut hedges rose at either hand, 
and made the blackness, if possible, more profound. Ghostlike 
statues and dismal urns glimmered at intervals out of shadowy 
recesses. Lidyard Chase, in common with many other mansions 
built in the beginning of the sixteenth century, possesses a gar- 
den laid out in the funereal and obsolete style of taste which our 
ancestors agreed to call Italian. My aimless walk had led me 
into the Italian garden. 

“ I walked on, enjoying the coolness, and calculating the 
chances presented by the brooding, starless sky, against the pos- 
sibility of a dry drive home. When the end of the walk was 
reached, I found myself upon the borders of an open space. My 
eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness, or perhaps 
the darkness had become less intense. It was plain to me that I 
stood upon the borders of a circular grass-plat, a central point 
from which, as from an axis, gravel paths shut in by yew hedges, 
like the path I had traversed, radiated at intervals like the spokes 
of a wheel. The centre of the grass-plat was occupied by a ped- 
estal — perhaps upholding a sun-dial, and beside it and partly 
leaning against it, stood a white figure, that of a woman in flow- 
ing draperies, which at the first sight I supposed to be sculptured, 
like the other figures in the recesses, out of stone. The fact of 
the face being partly turned away from me, and a light covering- 
veil or scarf being thrown about the head, aided the delusion. I 
had no suspicion that a living woman stood before me until I saw 
the figure move and heard it sigh. In the surprise of the discov- 
ery I drew back into the shelter of the yew-hedge upon my left 
hand. The lady had come out, like myself, for fresh air and soli- 
tude — it might not be agreeable to her to find that she was not 
alone. I had actually retreated half a dozen steps, treading as 
silently as I could, and keeping in the shadow of the hedge, 
when something happened which brought me to a sudden stand- 
still. The lady spoke. And her voice was the voice of Mrs, 
Kavanagh. 


206 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ ‘ How much longer before the end she said. ‘ How much 
longer before I go mad with the suspense and the horror of it ? 
How — !’ She broke off abruptly. She turned her head and 
called out harshly into the darkness that covered me, ‘ What was 
that ? Who’s there f 

“ I could not have answered her if my life had depended on it, 
so violent was the beating of my heart. Great God ! in what ter- 
rible jeopardy did the woman stand ? What unsuspected depths 
of passion and despair, existing in her soul and hidden behind 
the veil of her outward composure, had not that voice, speaking 
out of the heart of the midnight, revealed to me ? 

“ The shock that had paralyzed my faculties for the moment, 
in keeping me absolutely still, allayed the suspicions which a 
chance movement or sound had previously awakened. ‘ Wrong,’ 
I heard her say to herself ; ‘ no one there.’ She shivered. ‘ A 
cold night,’ she said. ‘Best to go in. How do I know what 
may not be happening at this moment, while I stand here ?’ She 
moved across the grass-plat in my direction. In another mo- 
ment she hurried by, passing so close to me that the skirts of her 
dress brushed over my feet, and the warm fragrance of her hair 
and her breath reached me where I stood in the shadow. 

“ I waited a few moments to recover myself before following 
her back to the house. 

“ Upon the threshold of the glass door, as I entered, lay a scrap 
of something white. I found it to be a lady’s handkerchief upon 
picking it up. The central piece of cambric had been torn in 
strips, and the bordering of lace was rent in many places. The 
faint, subtle perfume that exhaled from the handkerchief told 
my nostrils to whom it belonged, even before the familiar 
monogram of ‘ C. K.,’ embroidered in the corner, presented itself 
to my eyes. I put the handkerchief in my pocket and went up- 
stairs. 

“ A group of gentlemen had gathered on the landing, just out- 
side the door of the ball-room. The band was playing a lively 
galop, but I distinguished through the music the sound of voices 
raised in angry dispute. One of the disputants was Mr. Hawley. 
I recognized him instantly though his back was turned towards 
me — there being no mistaking the square head and the powerful 
physique of the man. He talked loudly and incessantly — he ges- 
ticulated like a man in a high state of Excitement and offence ; 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


207 


and Sir Philip Lidyard, who made another of the group, appeared 
to be the person who had offended him. 

“ Sir Philip’s frank, cheerful face was clouded with annoyance. 
He seemed divided between the desire to continue his ordinary 
relations with his friend and “the necessity of maintaining the 
opinion,whatever it was, the open expression of which had brought 
about the difference between them. The other men, to whom 
Hawley continually appealed, were manifestly anxious to make 
peace ; but Hawley’s indignation seemed to be increased rather 
than assuaged by their representatfons. ‘ Friend,’ he asseverated 
loudly, catching up some remark that had been made with the 

ingenuity of an inconsequently angry man, ‘ friend be d d ! 

Does his being my friend give him the right to insult me ? How 
would any one of you like it, in my place, if a friend of yours 
told you, in a lady’s presence, that you were not fit to be in her 
society ?’ He ended with a short, contemptuous laugh — he swung 
round upon his heel and presented his full face to my view. It 
was horribly flushed and swollen, the veins upon his forehead 
were turgid and prominent, the pupils of his eyes were widely 
distended and their whites tinged with blood. In that instant 
Mr. Hawley’s unusual excitement, Mr. Hawley’s husky volu- 
bility, were accounted for — in my opinion. Mr. Hawley was 
drunk ! 

“ Directly he saw me he appealed to me, familiarly and inco- 
herently : ‘ Come here, old chap, and tell us what you think about 
it. How would you like to be ridden over rough-shod by a man 
in his own house? You’re a man of sense — give us a sensible 
opinion. I’m engaged to dance this dance with Miss Rosalind 
Kavanagh. I’ve been interfered with — I’ve been treated in a man- 
ner which I won’t submit to. I’ve been told that I’m drunk, in 
the presence of a lady, and that I’d better make myself scarce. I 
appeal to your judgment. Am I drunk, like a blackguard — or am 
I sober, like a gentleman ? Out with it !’ 

“ My unconquerable dislike of the fellow rose up in me again 
as he appealed to me. I looked at him with a contempt, I spoke 
to him with a disgust, which I made no endeavor to disguise. 

* You have been drinking — you are not sober at this moment. I 
consider you absolutely unfit to dance with a lady. You asked 
for my opinion. Take it for what it is worth.’ 

“ For answer, Hawley burst into a fit of laughter, so wild, so 


208 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


strained, and so unnatural to hear, that those about him drew 
back in consternation. 

“ ‘ So that’s the verdict, is it ? I am drunk, and I’m not fit to 
dance with a lady ! I’ll show you a lady, by God, who won’t 
refuse to dance with me, drunk as I am ! The worse for her if 
she did ! But she won’t — she knows better ! Come and see !’ 

“Before any one of those surrounding could lay a detaining 
hand upon him, he was gone beyond their reach — gone into the 
ball-room. The other men stared at each other blankly. Philip 
and I followed in dismay. As he moved down the long room be- 
fore us, it was plainly seen that Hawley staggered in his walk, 
and balanced himself waveringly with movements of his outspread 
arms. With his swollen face and staring eyes, and the grotesque, 
unwieldy motions of his heavy figure, I don’t doubt that he pre- 
sented a dreadful spectacle. People turned round to look at him 
after he had passed. A hum of surprised conjecture and indig- 
nant comment followed him as he went. He became, in less 
space of time than it takes to write these words, the principal 
object of attention in the crowded room. But no one interfered 
with him, and he pursued his uneven course unhindered. 

“ Philip and I had almost overtaken him when he paused. He 
uttered a hoarse cry of triumph — rage — I don’t know what emo- 
tion that incoherent sound expressed. He pointed before him 
with his out-stretched hand. And the face that turned to con- 
front him, and was in an instant stricken into a rigidity and fix- 
edness like that of death, was the face of Mrs. Kavanagh. Wom- 
en cried out in alarm then, and men’s hands were stretched out 
to stop him ; but he thrust them aside and forced his unsteady 
way along, with that frozen goal in view. He was nearly upon 
her when he stopped. The dusky red faded out of his face, a 
dreadful stare of surprise came into his eyes. He put his hand 
to his head, he reeled and staggered, as if about to fall, and the 
unnatural dark color rushed up to his foreheard again. ‘ What’s 
— this ?’ he said, brokenly, between the hoarse, rattling gasps that 
burst from his laboring chest. ‘ I — don’t — understand !’ In an- 
other moment, and with a sickening crash, he fell — fell so near 
to her that he caught at and grasped her dress in the vain effort 
to save himself from falling. 

“A babel of voices rose up about us. People, in the imbecile 
fashion in which people will, crowded about the prostrate figure. 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


209 


‘ He’s in a fit,’ some called out. Others said, as I had said, ‘Dis- 
graceful, the man is drunk !’ Philip, who knelt by him, signalled 
to me. ‘ Send some of the servants here,’ he whispered, earnest- 
ly ; ‘I want somebody to help me carry him to his room. And 
tell one of the grooms to take the dog-cart over to Ketton and 
bring the doctor — Doctor Garland, of Church Lodge — back with 
him at once.’ 

“He spoke with a prompt decision and readiness which I 
should not, under the circumstances, have expected from him. I 
beckoned one of the servants who were shouldering and peeping 
at the door, and despatched him with the message to the stables. 
I returned to the side of the insensible man, and cut with my pen- 
knife the tightened collar-band which Philip was vainly trying to 
unfasten. Somebody handed me a glass of water over the heads 
of the curious, gapiug spectators. These retreated a little, for fear 
of sprinkling, and the next moment closed upon us in a more com- 
pact wall than ever. It was obviously necessary, in the interest 
of the patient, to disperse them, and I succeeded in doing this in a 
neat speech. ‘ Ladies and gentlemen, when a man falls down in 
a fit, he doesn’t want company — he wants air. And that is the 
very last thing the charitable people who are most anxious for 
his well-being think of giving him.’ The shafts of my mild 
sarcasm penetrated the hide of Society. Society ceased to make 
a barrier of itself and withdrew, indignant and contemptuous. 
Philip, the butler, and myself carried Mr. Hawley to his room. 

“ The experiences of my wandering life have qualified me, after 
a rough fashion, to render, in case of necessity, the services usual- 
ly required of an hospital assistant. Such restorative measure? as 
that experience suggested were of no avail. An hour went by 
and brought the doctor with it. His resources were taxed as un- 
availingly — his efforts were rewarded with as little success as my 
own. The last carriageful of guests drove away, the house be- 
came silent. There was no alteration in the stertorous breathing, 
no fading of the purple discoloration in the face that lay upon 
the bed, for hours. Gray dawn glimmered through the cracks in 
the blinds, some loud-voiced clock in the neighborhood was strik- 
the hour of two, when the first indications appeared of a coming 
change. Philip’s anxious solicitude for his friend accepted the 
signs as hopeful ones. He touched me, and whispered, ‘ He 
breathes more quietly ; he looks more like himself. Thank God, 
14 


210 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


he’s coming round at last!’ I looked at him, I consulted the 
doctor, mutely, with another look. That look said, ‘ Is the change 
a favorable change ?’ and the answer conveyed to me in the mo- 
tion of the doctor’s lips was ‘ No.’ The breathing stopped in a 
little while from then — stopped and went on again, and slackened 
— and at last ceased altogether. The purple flush sank out of the 
face, whose outlines were fast becoming set in the rigor of death. 
There was no struggle, no convulsion, when the end came. I 
knew that it had come when the doctor bent his ear to the heart 
for an instant and lifted and dropped the passive hand, and I 
broke the news to Philip as gently as I could. 

“Philip’s obstinate hope resisted to the last. ‘All over?’ he 
said, blankly, repeating my words. ‘I don’t understand you.’ 
He appealed to the doctor. The doctor answered him in a few 
brief words that left no doubt as to their meaning. The blow 
fell heavily on the young fellow’s affectionate heart. In the 
sincerity of his grief he reproached himself for having failed in 
loyalty to his dead friend. ‘ We have known each other for 
years, sir,’ he said, simply, to the doctor, ‘ and to-night we had a 
difference, for the first time in both our lives. It was my fault. 
I misjudged him cruelly, and he resented it. It cuts me to the 
heart to think I can never ask his pardon — now P The tears ran 
down his face ; he turned aside to hide them, and broke down al- 
^ together. What I could say honestly to comfort him, I said 
then. In a few words I succeeded in rousing him to a sense of 
the duties devolving upon him in regard to conveying, as gently 
as possible, the news to Lady Lidyard and the family of the dead 
m^. He ended by leaving the room in the company of the 
doctor. Pending the arrival of the house-keeper, I was left in sole 
charge of the chamber of death. 

“ The blinds rattled, the candles flickered drearily in the chill 
morning breeze that came through the open windows. The sit- 
uation seemed, in some inexplicable way, strange and yet famil- 
iar to me. My eyes involuntarily turned to that solemn presence 
there upon the bed, and in an instant I knew why. 

“Hawley lay as he had lain when, in the gray of the early 
morning, waking from my dream, I had seen him lying on the 
rude wooden bedstead in the room at the inn at Hull. The fan- 
cy had seized me then that he was dead. I looked upon him 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


211 


now with the light of life quenched in him, and as the flickering 
candle-flame played over his features I might have fancied him 
asleep. Strive against it as I would, the fascination of that idea 
drew me resistlessly to his side. He was only partially undressed ; 
his shirt, thrown widely open at the collar, revealed the massive 
proportions of his throat — revealed to me the plain, old-fashioned 
gold locket, that once before had attracted my attention, hanging 
round his neck by its shabby leather string. 

“ ‘ With a kind of superstitious belief that the locket would* 
bring about the end he had in view — did I say that he had made 
up his mind to hunt her down^ if it took him years to do it ? — he 
wore the locket about him night and day' 

“ Merciful God ! were those words, once uttered in my pres- 
ence by the living man, repeated now by the stern lips of the 
dead ? No ! no ! Cold, breathless, and silent, with the silence of 
the grave, the man whom I had hated lay before roe. The Voice 
that spoke to me was a warning Voice, heard and heeded by me 
before, in by-gone moments of peril and dread. It spoke again. 
It said : ‘ Open the Locket P 

“ I obeyed the warning Voice. I opened the locket. 

“ It held two portraits — those of a woman and a child ; and 
the face of the woman, at it looked at me from one of the crys- 
tal ovals, set in a shining rim, was the face of Mrs. Kavanagh ! 

“ My heart stopped beating as the dreadful truth burst upon 
me. My blood ran through my veins like liquid ice, and my 
hair seemed to rise and bristle on my head. I knew now who was 
the woman of Hawley’s story — the woman whom he had tracked 
out and followed down, and upon whom he had meant to wreak 
retribution, when the uplifted arm had, in the moment of its 
falling, been stayed by the Hand that moulds the destinies of 
man at will. The agony that had forced from her those wild 
words, overheard by me in the garden a few hours before, I com- 
prehended now. I knew now that my dream had been sent to 
me in forewarning of what was to come. The shadow that she 
brought with her in the vision had swallowed up and blotted out 
the brightness of the familiar scenes upon which I and mine had 
looked from childhood. It was to descend now in reality. It 
was to obscure an honorable name, and hang like a funeral hatch- 
ment over an honest threshold. The hideous blight that had 


212 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


befouled and empoisoned her life was to befoul and empoison the 
live3 of those two who loved her — how inevitably, how soon, God 
only knew ! 

“ Consciousness left me for a merciful space. Darkness closed 
in upon me. How many moments passed before I found my- 
self standing by the window, with the cold wind blowing on my 
face, I can’t tell. The Voice spoke to me again. ^ Rouse your- 
self, it said. ‘ Act while there is time. Hide the dreadful wit- 
ness of her sin and shame before it bears its silent, overwhelming 
testimony to other eyes than yours. For the sake of the innocent, 
if not for the sake of the guilty. Hide it quickly before they 
come !” 

“Again I obeyed. I returned to the bedside. I bent over 
the pillow, and as I did so the dead face seemed to frown at me. 
I forced my hand to steadiness, my will into volition. I loosened, 
with the aid of my penknife, the portrait of the woman from 
the case, and closed the locket, and laid it back upon that pulse- 
less breast. This was done, and the portrait hidden about me, 
before returning footsteps sounded on the stair.” 


CHAPTER XXII. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ I WENT down-stairs. The flaring gas-jets iii the corridors ; 
the glimpse that I caught, in passing, of the ball-room, with its 
faded flowers and brilliant decorations, and the chilly dawn peep- 
ing in at the long windows, maintained and strengthened the 
nightmare-like impression of unreality that haunted me. I un- 
did the fastenings of the hall-door with hands that were clum- 
sy and uncertain — like the hands of a blind man. I went out, 
walking as a blind man might have walked, into the chill of the 
gray dawning. 

“ The loud-voiced stable clock was striking six when I re-en- 
tered the house. The butler, carrying a coflee tray, encountered 
me in the hall. The man looked fagged and jaded, like a man 
who had been up all night, as, in answer to ray inquiry for his 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


213 


master, he pointed to the library door. The sound of voices, 
loudly raised in argument or dispute, reached me from within 
as I touched the door-handle. I hesitated and drew back. 

“In the moment of my hesitation the door was opened vio- 
lently from the inside. Philip appeared on the threshold. The 
nighPs anxiety and fatigue, the shock he had recently sustained, 
had left their traces upon him in the paleness of his complexion 
and the disorder of his dress. I had last seen him overwhelmed 
with grief — the emotion his face and manner betrayed now was 
of a different kind. Before I could make a movement of re- 
sistance, he caught me roughly by the arm, and dragged me into 
the library. 

“ The doctor, Mr. Garland, of Church Lodge, Ketton, a keen- 
looking, thin-lipped, youngish man, who has, within the last few 
years, succeeded to the practice of the elderly predecessor who 
prescribed for my measles, and physicked my whooping-cough 
when I was a boy, was standing by the table. His thin lips were 
rigidly compressed, there was a spot of red on each of his high 
cheek-bones. He presented the appearance of a man who had, 
in the exercise of his professional capacity, been unjustly of- 
fended, and who was determined not to prejudice his dignity 
by the loss of his temper. The horrible nightmare-like sensa- 
tion still weighed upon my mental and bodily faculties like a 
chain of lead. I submitted to Philip, when he confronted me 
with the doctor, and invited the attention of the doctor to my- 
self with a gesture of his hand. With a visible effort at self- 
control, he addressed Mr. Garland : 

“‘Before you go, sir, I should like to hear you repeat in the 
presence of my friend, Mr. George Kavanagb, what you have 
said to me. I’m not good at understanding scientific terms, and 
the more plainly you answer him, the more I shall be obliged to 
you.’ He turned to me. ‘ In the name of my poor friend, now 
lying dead up-stairs,’ said Philip, ‘ I ask you to put a question 
to the gentleman who attended him professionally in his last 
hours. A terrible doubt has been insinuated — a horrible conclu- 
sion has been arrived at ’ — his voice broke and faltered, but he 
steadied it, and went on — ‘ with regard to the cause of Hawley’s 
death. Ask the doctor what killed him.’ 

“ I could not frame words to do his bidding. I could only 
look at Mr. Garland. Mr. Garland answered, as if I had spoken ; 


214 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ ‘ There are appearances in the case of Mr. Hawley which 
might justify the conclusion that death resulted from paralysis 
of the vital nerve-centres, arising from cerebral suffusion. In 
plain English, it might be supposed that he died from the break- 
ing of a blood-vessel on the brain. Cases of this kind are not 
infrequent. Violent excitement — the unfortunate gentleman 
has been described as laboring under a considerable degree of 
excitement previous to the seizure — or emotion of any unusual 
kind — might be attended with such grave consequences. But 
there are other appearances ’ — he paused a moment — ‘ which are 
less satisfactory, and which, I frankly confess to you, I don’t un- 
derstand.’ 

“The room began to whirl round with me. The deadly 
faintness overpowered me again. I saw nothing steadily or 
plainly but the doctor’s face. I heard the words he was speak- 
ing indistinctly, for the rushing in my ears and the beating of 
my heart. 

“ ‘ You are aware that before a death can be properly regis- 
tered,’ Mr. Garland continued, ‘ it is necessary that a certificate 
should be obtained from a medical man, testifying that death 
took place from a specified complaint, an actual casualty, or 
transpired in the ordinary course of nature. It is useless to dis- 
guise — ’ He paused again. ‘ I regret to say that I cannot con- 
scientiously supply the usual certificate in the case of Mr. Hawley.’ 

“ ‘ Do you repeat,’ Philip burst out, loudly and vehemently, 
‘ that you believe him not to have come by his death in a natural 
way ?’ 

“ The tone irritated Mr. Garland. He replied, more sharply 
than he had yet spoken, ‘ I believe him to have come by his 
death in an unnatural way !’ 

“ ‘ Give me your answer in the plain words I asked for a min- 
ute ago,’ Philip returned, in the same loud, high tone. ‘ Do you 
suspect foul play ? Do you believe the case to be a case of 
murder ?’ 

“ Mr. Garland answered, shortly and sharply, ‘ Of murder or 
of suicide.’ 

“ Philip caught me by the arm and shook it roughly. ‘ Do 
you hear what he says ? Do you understand him as I understand 
him, or am I out of my senses ?’ 

“ He dropped my arm in another moment. He turned to the 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


215 


doctor again. ‘I ask your pardon, sir, if I offended you just now,’ 
he said, brokenly and deprecatingly. ‘The opinion you have 
expressed horrified me and shocked me. I’m hardly to be blamed 
if I was betrayed into forgetting myself a few moments ago. 
How can I entertain the idea that — that my poor friend killed 
himself? He had no troubles or anxieties to speak of. If he 
had been in debt or in love, / should have known of it. And, 
with regard to the other supposition — that of his having been — 
I can’t say the horrible word. He didn’t bear a grudge against 
any one — he hadn’t an enemy. I don’t believe a single creature 
exists in the world who has got any reason for wishing him out 
of it.’ 

“ There was a sound of wheels crashing up the gravel drive 
outside. The hall door bell rang violently a moment later. The 
unappeased doctor took his hat and went out of the library into 
the hall. Philip followed him, and I followed Philip mechan- 
ically. Mr. Garland spoke to us over his shoulder as he pulled 
on his gloves. ‘ They have sent over my gig, as I directed, from 
Ketton. I shall drive round by the coroner’s on my way home. 
Once I have made the coroner acquainted with the peculiar feat- 
ures presented by this case my professional responsibility ends 
— and I am heartily glad of it.’ He nodded to the butler — the 
butler opened the hall door. Mr. Garland had got half-way down 
the steps before he became aware that the vehicle waiting at the 
bottom of them was not his own property. 

“ It was a high-bodied, old-fashioned gig. There were two 
persons in it, one of them wearing a shiny oil-skin cape. Both 
were policemen. The man who wore the oil-skin cape jumped 
down from the driver’s side. He spoke to the doctor civilly and 
respectfully : ‘ Might I ask, sir, whether any unusual occurrence 
took place here last night ?’ 

“Mr. Garland answered: very sad occurrence. A gentle- 

man, a guest staying in the house, was taken suddenly ill.’ 

“ The policeman said : ‘ I must trouble you to answer another 
question, sir. Was the gentleman’s illness attended with any 
deplorable result ?’ 

“ The doctor returned, ‘ With the most deplorable of all results 
—the gentleman is dead.’ 

“ The driver of the gig had been listening with close attention. 


216 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


I noticed the reins lying slack on the sweat-streaked neck of the 
vtired animal that drooped between the shafts of the vehicle. I 
addressed a question to the driver. 

‘“You have driven some distance V 

“ ‘ A matter of nine miles,’ he returned. 

“ ‘ From Norwich V 

“ ‘ From Colegate Street Police-station, Norwich. Might you 
be acquainted with the name of Brinnilow hereabouts ?’ 

“ The butler answered for me eagerly, ‘ Yes, yes ! There’s 
Squire Brinnilow — Mr. Hoell Brinnilow, of Ketton Manor House, 
hard by the Green.’ 

“ ‘ What like is Mr. Hoell Brinnilow, of Ketton Manor-house 
— an active, hearty gentleman V 

“ The old servant shook his head. ‘ Mr. Hoell Brinnilow goes 
upon crutches. Mr. Hoell Brinnilow has been a cripple since his 
youth.’ 

“ The policeman who had driven the gig exchanged glances 
with the policeman in the oil-skin cape. Impelled by I don’t 
know what impulse, I put a question to this man. 

“ ‘ Has your business anything to do with Mr. Hoell Brinni- 
low V 

“ The man made answer, stolidly, ‘ My business has got to do, 
first of all, with a confession.’ 

“ Philip repeated, from behind me, ‘ With a confession V 

“ The man reiterated. 

“ ‘ With a confession of murder. Made at the Colegate Street 
Police-station, before the inspector on duty, at four o’clock this 
morning. To be made before a magistrate later on in court.’ 

“‘By whom?’ 

“ ‘ By Mr. Hoell Brinnilow.’ ” 


Bool? flit). 

SLEEPING- TIME. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ The Rainbow Inn, Norwich, December 20th. 

‘‘ My Journal lies open before me once more. The last lines 
that my hand traced upon these pages are months old. Christ- 
mas Day is close upon us — I wish the anniversary were over and 
past. Last night, waking from uneasy sleep in the old-fashioned 
chamber of the quiet inn at which I have taken up my quarters, 
I heard voices singing under my window. The song was an old 
one — the burden of it older still : ‘ ^eace on eartf), flooli toiU to men.’ 
It is no mere figure of speech when I write here that the words 
wrung my heart : that I stopped my ears to keep out the heaven- 
ly message that sounded — God help and pity all of us! — like 
some devilish mockery of earthly strife, and human misery and 
despair I 

“ The weather has been wild and stormy. Snow has fallen 
heavily — the iron fetters of a fierce frost hang upon the land. 
The north-east wind howls and rages. The sea is miles away, 
and yet, as I lie awake on these savage, gusty nights, I fancy 
that I hear it booming and roaring, and hurling its inert force 
desperately against the rugged sandstone cliffs that girdle it, as 
some condemned prisoner might hurl himself, in wild, despairing 
agony, against the walls of his prison cell. 

“ ‘ As some condemned prisoner — !’ 

“ The pen falls from my hand. My resolution fails me. To 
recall, to arrange, to set down as clearly and minutely as circum- 
stances will admit, the events which have transpired within these 
past months — this is the task which I have set myself, the task 


218 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


which I am unable to fulfil. The newspapers have already told 
the terrible story ; the evidence brought forward at the trial has 
already been recapitulated, dissected, and commented on from 
many different points of view by hundreds of reporters’ pens. 
Let the newspapers tell their story here.” 


THE STORY CONTINUED IN EXTRACTS FROM THE NEWSPAPERS. 

I. 


* * * =f: * 


“ Seldom has a more tragic tale of cruel wrong and passionate 
resentment, smouldering concealed for years, only to break out in 
the fierce lava-glow of active hatred and deadly revenge, been un- 
folded than that disclosed by the evidence adduced in the trial 
which has been selected to open the winter proceedings of the 
Norwich Court of Assizes. Hoell Gordon Brinnilow, the last re- 
maining representative of a well-known county family, self-accused 
of the murder of Mr. Reginald Hawley, second son of Gen. Car- 
lett Hawley, of Bushill, Surrey, has been tried for that crime, and 
found guilty by a jury of his fellow-countrymen. The facts of 
the case, as unfolded in the course of three days’ trial at the Nor- 
wich Sbirehall, in the presence of an overflowing assemblage of 
spectators, male and female, who crowded the privileged seats and 
encroached upon the oflBcial benches in their eagerness to gather 
the sensational disclosures which they had been led to anticipate, 
are these : ... In the year 18 — , the two principal actors in this 
harrowing drama were fellow-boarders at the old-established pub- 
lic-school of Burnham Green. Reginald Hawley was at that time 
one of the senior pupils ; a man in stature and physical develop- 
ment, if not in years ; of a temperament hardy, imperious, and over- 
bearing, and remarkable for personal daring and physical strength. 
Natures of this cast, before contact with the world have tempered 
and subdued them, are apt to be tyrannical, and certain it is that, 
although — if we may judge by the testimony of another fellow- 
pupil, between whom and the murdered man a strong friendship 
was formed — abend which endured into the years of manhood — 
Hawley was regarded with enthusiastic admiration and hearty re- 
gard by many of his school-fellows — there were others who had 
reason to fear and dread ‘ The Butcher,’ as the young athlete had 
been nicknamed — it may be in virtue of his sanguine complexion 


THE JOUENAL— CONTINUED. 


219 


and his hair, which at that time was of a reddish color; perhaps 
with reference to qualities less harmless than these. Certain it is 
that Reginald Hawley entertained a hearty dislike for a junior fel- 
low-pupil named Hoell Gordon Brinnilow, whom, in his capacity 
of fag — (the unwritten laws of the public-school sanction this sys- 
tem of servitude at the present day as much as they did twenty 
years ago) — the elder lad subjected to a merciless system of ill- 
treatment. For injuries like those endured by the wretched fag 
there is little or no redress. To boldly denounce and accuse his 
torturer would have been to render his school existence absolute- 
ly unbearable, for the English school-boy’s code of honor contains 
no more inexorable rule than that contained in the words, ‘ Thou 
shalt not tell tales.’ So the system of brutal oppression on the 
one hand, and of shrinking submission on the other, continued, un- 
til a more cruel outrage than any that had yet been wreaked on 
the unfortunate boy irrevocably blighted the future of Hoell Brin- 
nilow and seriously prejudiced the prospects of Reginald Hawley, 
who, as a consequence of the inevitable exposure, was summarily 
expelled from the school. Years passed. Of the two school-fellows 
one Was a crippled invalid, doomed to pass his days in sedentary in- 
activity, to suffer constant pain, and to endure a sharper anguish 
still — that of knowing that but for the bitter injury inflicted on 
him by a fellow-creature, no darker shadow would have overhung 
his life than that which falls to the lot of ordinary mortals. Al- 
though, by common testimony of many who knew him, the crip- 
pled man endured his misfortune with admirable fortitude, being 
remarkable for the persistent way in which he ignored the fact of 
his bodily weakness and most apparent deformity. Meanwhile 
the cause of all this suffering was pursuing at home and abroad a 
checkered career. He quitted Oxford in his second term, leav- 
ing behind him a reputation for extravagance and dissipation ; 
obtained through family interest a commission in a well-known 
cavalry regiment, and a few years later, becoming involved in cer- 
tain discreditable money embarrassments, from which General 
Hawley refused to extricate him, sold his commission, irretrieva- 
bly quarrelled with his family, and went abroad. The next news 
received of Mr. Reginald Hawley came from America, where he 
had adopted, and was said to pursue with credit, the profession of 
journalist. Later on, when the stormy year of 1870 completed the 
downfall of the Napoleonic dynasty, we And him fulfilling the du- 


220 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


ties of war-correspondent, attached to one of the leading New York 
journals. From 1872 to 1874 he is said to have resided on the 
Continent, still in pursuance of his occupation as literary purveyor 
of foreign news, but from that time all trace of him was lost un- 
til, in the month of September, 1886, the Russian steamer Volga 
arrived at Hull with Mr. Reginald Hawley as one of the passen- 
gers on board her. Once returned to his native country, Mr. 
Hawley was not slow in communicating with the old school-fellow 
to whose friendship for the deceased gentleman we have already 
alluded, and heartily accepted the invitation extended to him by 
Sir Philip Lidyard, of Lidyard Chase, to shoot over the covers of 
that extensive county estate, and renew the associations of by- 
gone days, before again leaving England. The possibility of a 
meeting transpiring between Mr. Hawley and the unfortunate vic- 
tim of his by-gone oppressions did occur to Sir Philip Lidyard, 
but before any steps could be taken to prevent such an encounter 
the meeting actually took place. And on that occasion the con- 
duct of the unfortunate master of Ketton Manor-house was dis- 
tinguished by the utmost delicacy, good-breeding and self-re- 
straint. If any resentment yet smouldered in his breast against 
the perpetrator of the cruel deed which had wrecked his life and 
blighted his prospects forever, Hoell Brinnilow concealed it, and 
gave the right-hand of good-fellowship to the man who had 
wronged him. Mr. Hawley and Hoell Brinnilow met and con- 
tinued to meet on terms of apparent cordiality, the last occasion 
upon which they held any communication being on the afternoon 
of October 1st, when the house in which they had first met, Sel- 
brigg Hall, the seat of Colonel Kavanagh, J.P. for this county, 
received them again as guests. Hoell Brinnilow’s conduct to 
Mr. Reginald Hawley was again distinguished by the utmost cour- 
tesy and attention. Mr. Hawley, happening to reject the offer of 
a cup of tea with the remark that he disliked the ordinary in- 
fusion of the herb, the suggestion that he should try some other 
form of liquid refreshment was heartily seconded by Brinnilow, 
who even proposed to mix for him an effervescing drink of which 
he alone held the secret of preparation, and, upon Mr. Hawley’s 
acceptance of the offer, accompanied him to the dining-room for 
the purpose of procuring the materials necessary to its composi- 
tion. The two men were alone together in the room ; no third 
person was witness to what transpired between them. A few 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


221 


minutes later, Mr. Hawley drove back to Lidyard Chase, in the 
company of Sir Philip Lid 3 '^ard ; and the prisoner, somewhat ab- 
ruptly, and without returning to the drawing-room, left the Hall 
and returned to the Manor-house. 

“ The evening of that date (October 1st) had been selected by 
Lady Lidyard as the occasion of a ball, to which the leading mem- 
bers of the county aristocracy, and the most intimate of her lady- 
ship’s more distant acquaintances had been invited. The ball, we 
may say, had been projected in honor of the formation of a mar- 
riage engagement between the owner of Lidyard Chase and the only 
daughter and sole heiress of Colonel Kavanagh. The beauty and 
the popularity of the young lady, together with the fact of her 
being the heroine of the occasion, caused her hand to be eagerly 
sought for by would-be partners, and among those aspirants who 
obtained the desired favor was Mr. Hawley. Later on, when the 
gentleman returned to claim his partner for the allotted dance. 
Miss Kavanagh (we have it on the testimony of Sir Philip Lid- 
yard, who was one of the witnesses at the trial) was rendered un- 
easy and alarmed by the change in his voice, face, and general de- 
meanor, which Sir Philip Lidyard and many other observers could 
hardly fail to ascribe to an intemperate indulgence in the pleas- 
ures of the champagne buffet. Remonstrance on the part of Sir 
Philip was met by indignant protest on the part of Mr. Hawley. 
Dispute raged high, and might have ended in blows but for the 
tact and cool good-temper of the former. Finally, Mr. Hawley 
burst through the crowd of witnesses which had gathered about 
himself and his opponent, and in the very act of re-entering the 
ball-room was seized with a fit, the immediate symptoms of which 
seemed to be of an apoplectic nature. He was removed to his 
room, and a local medical attendant, Dr. Garland, of Church 
Lodge, Ketton, was summoned to his bedside. Attempts at re- 
animation, however, proved futile, and in the short space of three 
hours from the time of the seizure the unfortunate gentleman 
breathed his last. 

“ Up to this moment, not one of the anxious watchers by the 
bedside of the stricken man had entertained the slightest doubt 
that the illness of Mr. Hawley proceeded from other than natural 
causes. Sir Philip Lidyard had barely rallied from the shock 
conveyed to him in the news of his friend’s death, when the out- 
spoken testimony of Dr. Garland confronted him with that ap- 


222 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


palling possibility. Certain symptoms apparent in the case — 
symptoms already detailed at full length in previously published 
reports of the medical evidence given at the trial — had aroused 
the suspicions of the doctor, and determined him in the refusal 
of the usual death certificate until the result of a 'post-mortem 
examination would have practically settled all doubt as to the 
cause of Mr. Hawley’s sudden death. 

“ At this juncture, and before Sir Philip Lidyard had given 
utterance to his first emotions of horror and surprise, a messen- 
ger arrived in haate from the Colegate Street Police-station, Nor- 
wich, with the news that Mr. Hoell Brinnilow had voluntarily 
given himself into custody as the murderer of Reginald Hawley. 

“By poison — the unhappy creature averred — the deed had 
been committed. In the subsequent post-mortem examination by 
Dr. Garland and Mr. Bond, it was ascertained that there was a 
marked degree of cerebral effusion and turgescence; that the 
lungs of the deceased were considerably congested, and that 
whereas the other internal organs were healthy, the pharynx and 
oesophagus showed signs of an irritation, which was also appar- 
ent in the intestines. Decomposition resulted with extraordinary 
rapidity, and this fact, coupled with the other appearances, led 
to the inference that the death of Mr. Hawley resulted from the 
felonious administration of a vegetable deliriant poison, no less 
deadly than atropia, the active principle of belladonna. 

“ Towards the discovery of this alkaloid, therefore, the efforts 
of the distinguished London chemist — to whom, not content 
with the results of his own experiments. Dr. Garland forwarded 
a jar containing portions of the viscera, etc., of the deceased — 
were directed. The microscope, neither in the hands of Dr. Gar- 
land nor of the expert furnished any confirmation in the shape of 
a stray seed, a minute fragment of leaf tissue, or a portion of a 
.berry, to prove that atropine was the toxic agent employed in 
the removal of Mr. Hawley. And the result of the analysis 
proved even more discouraging. True it is there are no marked 
chemical reactions by which the presence of atropia can be iden- 
tified in the body of man or animal. But one well-known 
physiological test exists, which experience has proved wellnigh 
infallible. This test, as Dr. Garland unwillingly acknowledged 
at the trial, when applied by him, failed to produce the result an- 
ticipated. The experiment made by the London analyst was 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


223 


only one shade more successful. In the absence of any proofs 
resulting from this test, several well-known medical men, of wide 
metropolitan and provincial experience, did not hesitate to come 
forward with the published conviction that Mr. Reginald Haw- 
ley’s death was not owing to the action of poison at all, and that 
the voluntary confession of Mr. Hoell Brinnilow had been made 
when that unfortunate gentleman was laboring under the influ- 
ence of an insane delusion. 

“ In the face of this independent testimony, and as the result 
of the inquiries before the coroner and the magistrates, and pri- 
marily, of the confession alluded to above, Mr. Hoell Brinnilow 
was committed to jail, and, on the opening day of the Norwich 
Winter Assizes, was placed in the dock upon the capital charge. 
No answer being made by him to the indictment, a plea of not 
guilty was entered by the learned judge, and the trial proceeded. 

“ The prosecution was, as may be inferred, based upon facts 
revealed in the prisoner’s statement, made under due caution be- 
fore a magistrate, on the day subsequent to the Colegate Street 
confession. According to this statement — to all particulars of 
which the prisoner steadily adhered throughout the trial — the 
idea of putting Mr. Hawley out of the world was not the result 
of the vengeful brooding of years, but occurred to him shortly 
after their first meeting at Selbrigg Hall, upon which occasion it 
will be remembered that Hoell Brinnilow conducted himself, in 
the opinion of several persons who were present, with great deli- 
cacy and admirable self-control. The diabolical suggestion once 
entertained, the means whereby the vengeful plan might be car- 
ried out presented themselves. The prisoner obtained poison; 
how, or where, or of what nature he steadily refuses to disclose, 
and waited for an opportunity to administer it. To quote his 
own words, he ‘ carried the bottle in his pocket for several days.’ 
Several days, during which he maintained the semblance of cor- 
dial feeling towards the unhappy fellow-creature whom he in- 
tended to destroy ! And last, on the eve of the ball at Lidyard 
Chase, the opportunity came. In the presence of Hoell Brinni- 
low, Mr. Hawley expressed his dislike of tea. In the hearing of 
several persons, three of whom — Miss Rosalind Kavanagh, Mr. 
George Kavanagh, and Sir Philip Lidyard — appeared as witnesses 
at the trial, the prisoner offered his services in the concoction of 
the effervescing drink already mentioned. He accompanied Mr. 


224 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


Hawley into the dining-room, as before related. There, accord- 
ing to the prisoner, Mr. Hawley sat down in a chair with his back 
to the sideboard at which the deadly draught was mixed for him. 
The contents of the bottle were slyly transferred to the tumbler, 
which was then handed to the victim. He drank some of it and 
said ‘ it had a queer taste,’ but afterwards emptied the glass. 
‘Then he got up,’ goes on the statement, ‘ and went to the door. 
But at the door he turned back and asked me to shake hands 
with him, and say that I forgave him for the injury he had done 
me when we were boys at school. I said No ! then ; but after- 
wards, when I knew that he was dead, I resolved to give myself 
up to justice.’ 

“ Having administered the nameless vegetable alkaloid, which 
was effectually to rid him of the enemy who had sought his for- 
giveness in vain, Hoell Brinnilow returned to his residence, the 
Manor-house, Ketton Green. He went by way of the common, 
instead of taking the short-cut through the Hall plantation (we 
quote from the statement again), and on the common threw the 
bottle away. Search has been made for this 'piece de convictioin^ 
but without success. 

“ Once arrived at home, we suppose that he waited, in an 
agony of guilty suspense, for the news that should assure him of 
the success of his design. According to the evidence of the but- 
ler, William Jarvis, who was in the service of the prisoner’s father 
before the prisoner was born, and seemed broken down by the 
weight of the disgrace which had fallen upon a once honorable 
family — he did not go to bed. ‘ Mr. Hoell sat up late in the 
study,’ said the old servant, ‘ and the house-keeper and I sat up, 
too, knowing his ways. At half -past twelve, or thereabouts, 
some one rang at the gate. It turned out to be a groom from The 
Chase, who had been sent to fetch the doctor in a hurry, and had 
stopped at the wrong house. A gentleman staying there on a 
visit had been taken with a fit, and was terrible bad — he seemed 
like dying, the man said. Some time after that the house-keeper 
took my master’s supper into the study. He wasn’t there. He 
i?iust have let himself out quietly, we said, and gone to take a 
little exercise in the cool night air. And as time went by and 
he didn’t come back, we made sure that, being an impulsive gen- 
tleman, he had hired a fly — there were several standing outside 
the Norfolk Arms — and driven to The Chase to make inquiries, 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


225 


and that, finding things less bad than had been described, he had 
been persuaded to stop. I made so sure of that that I never 
troubled my mind; but Mrs. Weather was uneasy from the be- 
ginning.’ 

“ ‘ Mrs. Weather ’ is another old domestic, whose evidence was 
not taken at the trial upon sufficient reasons. 

“ The butler’s theory about the hired fly proved incorrect. 
While William Jarvis and the house-keeper waited for their mas- 
ter, that master, in a state of unnatural excitement, the inference 
of which alone may account for the performance by a cripple of 
such a feat, was proceeding to The Chase, a distance of some four 
miles, on foot, or, rather, on crutches. What he did there is not 
known. Probably he hung about the gates, or skulked in the 
shadow of the shrubberies, looking up at the lighted windows of 
the great house, and waiting — waiting in a frenzy of suspense, 
for some indication of what was passing within. What his ac- 
tions subsequently were we gather from the testimony of John 
Willis, a groom in the service of Sir Philip Lidyard, who, as soon 
as his master had been satisfied beyond doubt that life was really 
extinct in the body of his friend, was sent into Norwich with the 
dog-cart, in charge of certain telegraphic messages, which were to 
be despatched to the relatives of Mr. Hawley as soon as the post- 
office should open in the morning. The stable clock was strik- 
ing the quarter to three, according to the witness’s account, when 
he drove through the lodge-gates. The mare in harness, a spir- 
ited creature, shied, as a figure ‘ seemed to rise up by the road- 
side,’ and called in agonized tones to the driver to pull up, for 
God’s sake ! The groom did so, and recognized the prisoner. In 
the witness’s own words, ‘ he spoke in a strange, wailing sort of 
voice, and asked whether it was true that there was a death at the 
house. I gave back the answer Yes, and that it had happened 
scarce an hour ago. He spoke again, all quavering, like an old 
man, and asked me where I was going. I said to Norwich, nine 
miles away, on a message for my master. Then the prisoner 
said he would give me two sovereigns to give him a lift. I asked. 
How far ? He said as far as I was going. I wasn’t sorry to have 
company — it being a lonesome road — so helped him to climb 
into the trap, which he had, as may be supposed, a good deal of 
diflSculty in doing. He never spoke a word the whole way, and 
I could hear his teeth chattering, as if he had got the ague. It 

15 


226 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


was half-past four when we passed the Greenhills Tavern, and 
when we got into Magdalen Street the prisoner got down, with 
my help, and thanked me. He gave me the two sovereigns. I 
noticed that his hand, as it touched mine in giving me the 
money, was very cold — corpse cold, almost. I drove away then, 
without looking back to see which way he was going.’ 

“ We know in what direction the steps of the miserable man 
were bent. Driven to desperation by the torments of remorse, 
Hoell Brinnilow sought to make the only expiation in his power 
for the crime which he had committed, we must say deliberate- 
ly, since the theory of insanity, upon which the defence was 
mainly based, has been summarily set aside by the decision of 
the Grand Jury. Amid a scene of excitement, perhaps unpar- 
alleled in the records of the trials held in the Norwich Shirehall 
since its walls arose on the site of the ancient building which 
was burned to the ground in the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, yesterday’s verdict was given. Ladies sobbed and fainted, 
the eyes of men were wet with emotion as the fragile, shrunken 
figure of the deformed man was supported to the front of the 
dock. With a face whose drawn aspect and dreadful pallor 
might have been likened to that of a corpse, but with unflinch- 
ing self-possession, Hoell Brinnilow heard the question put to 
the jurors whether they had agreed, and the returned answer in 
the affirmative. Then came the solemn verdict of ‘ Guilty,’ and 
the usual query ensued whether the prisoner had anything to 
say why the court should not give him judgment to die according 
to the law. Every ear was eagerly strained to catch the answer 
that came back as Hoell Brinnilow lifted his head and replied, 
speaking at first faintly and brokenly, then with greater strength, 
assurance, and distinctness: 

“ ‘ I consider the verdict a just verdict. I have nothing more 
to say.’ 

“The effect produced by these few words was an electrical 
one, and the scene in court attained such an emotional pitch, 
that the usher’s reading of the proclamation was completely 
drowned. Even the judge’s accents faltered as he addressed the 
prisoner in the following terms : — 

“ ‘ Hoell Gordon Brinnilow, I am called, in the painful exercise 
of my duty, to pass sentence upon a person found guilty of one of 
the greatest offences in the sight of God and man — the crime of 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


227 


deliberate murder. You stand an awful and striking example 
of the justice of Providence — of that punishment which, sooner 
or later, never fails to overtake the guilty. You have been com- 
pelled by remorse, and the agonies and tortures of a guilty mind, 
to furnish that evidence against yourself which it was in the 
power of none to supply, and the guilt which you yourself at- 
tested to has been confirmed by the result obtained in the medi- 
cal examination and analysis of the body of your victim. I 
trust that every one who hears the awful story of your tempta- 
tion and your fall will bear in mind that a time will arrive, most 
probably in this world, most surely in another, when guilt will 
meet its due punishment. In your unhappy case, that period is 
already come when you must receive the reward of your crimes. 
Impelled by the long-cherished desire of vengeance upon one 
who had injured you, you, under a false and treacherous pretence 
of kindness and good-will, deliberately formed the design of de- 
stroying Reginald Hawley. With this purpose you purchased,* 
or otherwise procured, of a person or persons whose name or 
names you have resolutely refused to disclose, a vegetable poison 
so deadly, and, at the same time, so volatile, that, while it de- 
stroys human life in a few hours, it leaves comparatively few 
traces behind by which its nature may be determined. This 
agent you mingled in the draught which you offered to Mr.. 
Hawley under specious pretence of friendship. Even at that 
moment there had been time to draw back, when the overtures 
made by your unhappy victim for forgiveness of the old grievous 
wrong, inflicted so many years ago, might have softened the 
most callous of human hearts.’ Here the prisoner was observed 
to shed tears, and his lordship continued : ‘ So much of secrecy 
had been observed by you in the procurement of the deadly 
drug — and in its administration — and so subtle and mysterious 
were its effects, that if the consciousness of your deed, more 
poignant and destructive than the draught itself, had not im- 
pelled you to disclose your guilty secret, the crime might never 
have been brought home to you. Although, up to the instant 
of its committal, your life has been a blameless one, I cannot, in 
the absence of any recommendation to mercy on the part of the 
jury, hold out to you any hope of an amelioration of the sen- 
tence which I am now constrained to pass upon you.’ 

“ The judge then assumed the black cap, and pronounced the 


228 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


usual form of sentence, concluding, ‘ And may the Lord Almighty 
have mercy on your soul !’ to which aspiration there was a gen- 
eral and fervent rejoinder of ‘ Amen ! ’ ” 


II. 

% ^ ^ ^ 

“Hoell Gordon Brinnilow has been found 'guilty and sen- 
tenced to death, and a trial which has created wide-spread inter- 
est throughout the country has come tc^ a close ! Few sentences 
have ever been passed which have provoked so strong an ex- 
pression of surprise as that which immediately followed the sol- 
emnly expressed death penalty. Be the verdict just or not, the 
delivery of it created something like a shock in court. At the 
Norwich Court of Assize the good old rule, that a prisoner is 
entitled to the benefit of a doubt, appears to have been forgotten. 
Doubt exists in the case which is now the subject of such wide- 
spread comment. The evidence furnished by the post-mortem 
examination, and the subsequent analysis by Dr. Garland and 
the experienced and capable London analyst to whom certain 
portions of the remains were submitted for examination, is 
doubtful. Though the post-mortem appearances described in the 
evidence are considered by Dr. Garland, Mr. Bond, and the London 
expert to furnish indisputable proof that Mr. Hawley died from 
the effects of a vegetable alkaloid, the analytical inquiries have 
failed to furnish the name of the alkaloid. There has been much 
talk about atropine, but the atropine theory is practically quashed 
with the failure of the physiological test. Again, though the 
medical gentlemen are agreed to consider the symptoms pre- 
sented by Mr. Hawley before death and the post-mortem appear- 
ances as indicative of poison, they do not deny that the same 
symptoms might have been produced and identical appearances 
have resulted from a purely natural cause. Last, but not least, 
the most doubtful point of all is to be found in the question, 
deliberately set aside by judge and jury in the course of the 
trial, whether Hoell Brinnilow is a sane man, or an eccentric 
semi-lunatic, subject to hallucinations. This, in our opinion, 
should have been the main point upon which the counsel re- 
tained by the friends of the prisoner should have based the 
defence, instead of building it on the theory of the crime having 


THE JOURNAL-^CONTINUED. 229 

been really committed by the prisoner in a moment of tempo- 
rary insanity. 

“ Is it unlikely that a deformed and weakly semi - invalid, 
doomed to suffer life-long misery as the result of a terrible injury 
to the spine received in boyhood, should little by little succumb 
to that insidiously encroaching brain malady, which is a com- 
plication not unfrequently to be met with in connection with 
spinal complaints? Is it beyond possibility that the agitation 
and excitement produced by the encounter, after so many years 
of absence, with the cruel en^my of his oppressed and tortured 
childhood, should have its effect upon the already tottering 
reason of Hoell Brinnilow? From incipient mania to active 
frenzy is but a short step, and it may be that, under the latter 
conditions, the Colegate Street confession was made on the fatal 
morning of October 2d. If further proofs of the prisoner’s in- 
firm mental condition are wanting, surely they are to be found 
in the recorded minutes of his demeanor before and during the 
trial. The mania— if_^mania it is — is suicidal, if anything. The 
almost unbroken preservation of composure, when liberty and 
life hung upon the issue of the proceedings; the remarkable 
unwillingness to furnish the defending counsel with any assist- 
ance; the extraordinary, almost foppish, attention paid to mat- 
ters of toilet, as though the prisoner’s dock were a favorable sit- 
uation for the display of elaborate attire and showy jewelry; 
surely these instances indicate an abnormal condition of mind 
on the part of the condemned man, and furnish an overwhelm- 
ing amount of proof in support of the theory we now advance.” 


Ill 

* * * 

“It is no exaggeration to say that last night the town of 
Norwich was ringing with the subject of the decision arrived at 
by the jury in the case of Hoell Brinnilow, and that a very gen- 
eral feeling exists that the verdict has been hastily given, with- 
out due regard to the doubts cast upon the case by the nature 
of the scientific evidence adduced for the prosecution. Public 
sentiment runs so high that proposals for petitions to the Queen 
and the Home Secretary, in furtherance of a mitigation of the 
sentence passed upon the prisoner, are being put into shape. 


230 


BKAGON’S TEETH. 


With the London papers of this morning the verdict is unpop- 
ular, and a hint is held out that in certain distinguished quarters 
surprise has been expressed at the result of the trial. There is 
also a rumor that public feeling in the metropolis is also about 
to take the practical form of a memorial to the Home Secretary 
in favor of a respite. The same sentiments have found expres- 
sion in our chief provincial centres, the most striking illustration 

being at M , that, in the name of common humanity, it is at 

least necessary to make an effort to save the unfortunate man, 
now lying under sentence in Norwich Jail, from the last‘ dread 
office of the law.” 


IV. 

* ♦ ♦ 

“ Cherchez la femme ! Adoption of the famous piece of ad- 
vice which has been attributed to Fouche, would lead to no in- 
fallible result in the case which has thronged the Norwich Shire- 
hall for three days, and which ended yesterday with a verdict 
which no lover of justice will feel eager to dispute. No need to 
look for the woman, who, all unseen herself, manipulates the 
strings which move the actors in many a terrible drama of hu- 
manity, to deeds which the world shudders at from time to time. 
The cunning of a crHin^ the malice of an ape, the thirst for re- 
venge — revenge at any price — upon the man who had vainly be- 
sought his pardon for a wrong inflicted many years ago, impelled 
the miserable perpetrator of this brutal murder to the act which 
his own guilty conscience afterwards urged him to bare to the 
light of day. The sickly sentimentalists, who are at all times 
ready to treat a condemned homicide as a saintly martyr, may 
promote petitions and organize meetings of protest against the 
just decision arrived at by the jury in the Brinnilow poisoning 
case, but it is to be confidently premised that their efforts will be 
in vain. A justly earned death sentence is not to be remitted, 
or a reasonable verdict quashed, because the weak-minded of 
both sexes are apt to indulge in a puerile partiality for petting 
criminals.” 

V. 

* Ht % * * 

“ It will be remembered that Mrs. Weather, the house-keeper 
who has been in the service of the Brinnilow family for years, 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


231 


was not able to give evidence at the trial. The shock received 
by the woman — who was the prisoner’s nurse in childhood, and is 
warmly attached to him — when the news of the Colegate Street 
confession and his subsequent arrest was brought to her, was so 
severe that it induced a violent epileptic fit. During the con- 
vulsions inseparable from the attack, the woman injured her 
head so severely that it was necessary to convey her to the Nor- 
wich Hospital, where, fever and delirium supervening, she has 
lain for some weeks in a precarious condition. It is reported 
that a favorable change has taken place in her condition, and 
that she is slowly recovering;” 


VI. 

* * 

“Lid YARD — Kavanagh. — On November 1 9th, at Ketton Old 
Church, Philip Cunningham Lidyard, Bart., of Lidyard Chase, 
to Rosalind, only daughter of Col. James Kavanagh, late of 
Madras Army, and of Selbrigg Hall, in the county of Norfolk. 
Privately, no cards.” 


CHAPTER H. 

THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 

“ N ORWiCH, December Slst. 

“Yes, they are married,* the day which should have been 
born to the joyous clashing of bridal bells, and died amid re- 
joicings, has crept upon us stealthily, and sobbed itself to sleep 
in a storm of driving hail. Scarcely half a dozen persons, my- 
self included, were present at the ceremony. My niece was 
plainly dressed in travelling attire. The cruel months that have 
passed over us have robbed her of her bloom. Her charming 
figure has lost its roundness ; her eyes are less bright than I re- 
member them. The bridegroom was paler and more preoccu- 
pied than I should have expected Philip to be on the day of his 
wedding. Time and Fate have wrought sad changes about us 
and in us since the first lines were written in the Journal of 
Vagabond George. 

“The breakfast, to which we returned, made no pretence of 


232 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


being anything more than an ordinary morning meal. As I set 
my foot upon the threshold, which I have not crossed since that 
fatal night, I looked up, almost expecting to see the shadow that 
broods over it, looming visibly above the carved escutcheon, 
waiting to descend. 

“ Mrs. Kavanagh was not present at the ceremony. She kept 
her room, as she has kept it these months past. Her state of 
health gives present cause for grave anxiety — the change in her 
is terrible to see. Only for a moment I caught sight of her. 
Did my eyes, in encountering hers, betray my knowledge of her 
dreadful secret ? I hope not ! I hope not ! 

“ The newly-married couple have made no preparations for a 
protracted tour. Their honeymoon will be spent in Paris as 
quietly as circumstances will admit. Rosalind’s anxiety with 
regard to her mother would have kept her, in defiance of the 
established custom, resolutely at home, had not Mrs. Kavanagh’s 
veto been put, peremptorily and decidedly, upon the mere sug- 
gestion of such an arrangement. The change which has taken 
place in her is not merely a physical one. The altered state of 
Rer temper, the dreadful irritability of her nerves — now relaxed 
from the maddening tension of suspense unutterable, dread be- 
yond expression, endured in these past months of silent, secret 
suffering — render a parting between Rosalind and herself abso- 
lutely desirable, if the relations between mother and daughter 
are ever to be re-established on the old footing of affectionate 
confidence and perfect love. Struck down as he was upon the 
brink of the fulfilment of his resentful purpose, Hawley has yet, 
in some measure, revenged himself. He it was who raised the 
barrier that shuts her out from the object of her heart’s dear- 
est devotion. Day by day, hour by hour, his relentless hand^ 
stretched from the grave, has thrust that mother and daughter, 
inch by inch, farther apart. 

“ When did this sad fact become apparent to me ? On the 
wedding-day, when the bride — our miserable pretence of break- 
fast being over — withdrew to make her final preparations for 
travelling and to take leave of Mrs. Kavanagh. 

“ The desolate activity which prevails before a departure 
was going on in the hall, where Philip, my brother James, and 
myself were waiting for Lady Lidyard’s reappearance. Suddenly 


THE JOURNAL— CONTINUED. 


233 


the door of Mrs. Kavanagh’s private room burst open, and my 
niece ran out. She was sobbing hysterically — she hardly seemed 
able to articulate, in the violence of her distress. She took a 
hurried leave of her father, she absolutely passed me by, and 
sought refuge in the carriage without a glance at the servants, 
who had mustered on the steps to give their young mistress 
their humble good-wishes at parting. Her husband followed 
her. As her head drooped upon his shoulder — as she turned to 
him, for the first time in their wedded life, for sympathy and 
consolation, a few words which escaped her reached my ears : 

“‘Not a kiss! — scarcely a look or a word! Oh, mamma! — 
mamma ! what have I done to deserve it?’ 

“ The carriage moved on. They were gone — and the dead 
leaves of last year ran races in the empty avenue. I went back 
to Norwich that afternoon.” 

END OF THE EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL. 


CHAPTER III. 

PLEASANT REMEMBERS. 

Early on the morning of December 3, 1886, a patient was 
discharged as cured from the Female Accident Ward of the Nor- 
wich Hospital. 

The patient was a middle-aged woman, of spare figure and 
respectable appearance. She was of a swarthy complexion, 
though haggard from recent illness, and the black hair that 
peeped out from underneath her plain bonnet of brown straw 
was thickly streaked with white. The nurse who parted from 
her at the hospital entrance did so with a palpable lack of in- 
terest in the patient — the patient’s curt farewell expressed no 
gratitude to the nurse. She descended the steps, which were 
slippery with frost, with slowness and hesitation, hesitated a mo- 
ment as if bewildered by the keenness of the wintry air and the 
dazzling whiteness of the snow which had fallen heavily on the 
previous night, and now lay thickly in the streets and on the 
house-tops, and then struck into the carriage drive that leads to 


234 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


the outer gates. The porter looked out of his lodge as she went 
through the gates, and gave her a civil good-day. The woman 
made no response. 

“ That’s a surly one,” commented the porter, following her 
with a glance of disapproval. Foreign, by the looks of her. I’ll 
give her the benefit of the doubt, as a Christian is bound to. 
Perhaps she doesn’t understand what civility means — in the 
English language.” 

Having administered the balm of this charitable conclusion to 
his own wounded self-respect, the porter returned to his comfort- 
able fireside. The discharged patient walked on. The keen cold 
air had had its bracing effect upon the nerves which were weak- 
ened by long confinement ; the consciousness of personal inde- 
pendence, submerged under the recently acquired habit of sub- 
mission to authority and lessened by long sickness, began to 
awaken with the sense of freedom ; she walked more steadily, 
though she looked about her doubtfully from time to time, as 
any ordinary pedestrian might in a strange locality. The site 
occupied by the Norwich Hospital is situated, as every resident 
knows, immediately without St. Stephen’s Gates. The old path 
at the foot of and outside the city wall, which formerly led from 
St. Stephen’s Gates to St. Giles’s Gates, now forms the wide street 
known as the Chapel Field Road. The woman pursued her way 
along the Chapel Field Road for some distance before she turned 
to the left and entered a narrow thoroughfare. 

It was hardly ten o’clock. The tea and bread-and-butter of- 
ferred her before leaving the hospital she had been unable to 
touch. Now the pangs of hunger began to assail the conva- 
lescent, now the weariness of weakness hung upon her limbs like 
clogs of lead. The savory smell of fried bacon and coffee came 
gratefully to her nostrils as she passed the open door of a cheap 
restaurant of the lower class — a teapot, flanked on one side by a 
dish of raw chops and on the other by a wicker basket of cloudy- 
complexioned eggs, and modestly backed by the dirty red cur- 
tain which concealed the gastronomic ecstasies of the patronizers 
of “ Faggs’s Eating-house ” from public view, presented optical 
evidence of the entertainment to be had within. Pleasant Weath- 
er passed on, stopped, hesitated, and then, turning back, entered 
“ Faggs’s Eating-house.” 

- The place was small and old-fashioned, but suflBciently clean 


PLEASANT REMEMBERS. 


235 


\ 

within. Wooden partitions insured the privacy of the eaters, 
who sat at the iron-topped tables discussing late breakfasts or 
early dinners with appetites, of unvarying excellence. These 
were principally men of the laboring class, and were waited on 
by a greasy boy in a white apron,, and a young woman of down- 
trodden and untidy appearance, who, when not engaged in at- 
tending to the wants of the patrons of Faggs’s, was occupied in 
suckling a baby. 

Pleasant Weather sat down at the unoccupied table nearest to 
the door. The woman approached her, and took her modest 
order for a pot of tea, a roll, and a fresh egg. The food was 
brought to her, and she ate with appetite, and then sat resting, 
looking about her idly, leaning back in the corner between the 
wooden partition and the wall, her decent bonnet-strings untied 
and thrown aside, and her worn gloves lying before her on the 
table. 

Little by little, as her worn body revived under the stimulat- 
ing influence of the nourishment she had taken, the lethargic 
dulness passed from her mind, the numbing weight that had 
rested on her brain lifted. Yet another moment, and the veil 
that hung between her dazed memory and the cruel past was 
snatched away. 

A stranger’s voice, coarse and husky and common, speaking 
on the other side of the partition that divided her from the 
neighboring table, gave back the master-key that alone might 
open her locked-up heart : repeated the name that she had not 
been able to remember. 

Hearing it, she rose up and cried out. 

A face was thrust over the partition — an ugly, bloated face — 
and the voice that belonged to it addressed her : 

“ What’s the matter, missus ?” 

“The matter?” repeated Pleasant Weather. 

-- “ You called out, you know,” said the slatternly waitress, com- 
ing to her side. 

“Did I?” 

“ Quite loud and sharp — ^ Where is he ? Let me go to him !’ 
— just like that.” 

“ Aye, ’tis my way by times.” 

The man with the bloated face leaned his elbows on the par- 
tition. 


236 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


“ If it is your way, missus, it’s an uncomfortable way, and I 
advise you to get out of it. A working-man with a family to 
support can’t afford, in the interests of that family, to bolt a 
whole crust at a gulp, as my mate here did when you screeched 
out so sudden just now. ‘ Where is he ? Let me go to him !’ 
says you. If you had meant him as my mate and me was a-talk- 
ing about at the moment when you screeched and interrupted 
us, we could have told you where to find him, up to eight o’clock 
to-morrow morning; up to eight o’clock to-morrow morning, 
after which time he’ll have changed his address. That’s what 
he’ll have done. Eh, mate ?” 

A hoarse laugh sounded in response from the other side of 
the partition. Other faces were looking out from the other 
boxes now, and the consciousness of having an auditory stimu- 
lated the speaker to fresh flights of humor. He leered at Pleas- 
ant Weather with eyes that were still watery from the over- 
night’s debauch ; he wagged his head knowingly ; his beery 
breath, as it reached her, crouching in the corner between the 
wooden partition and the wall, sickened her to loathing. 

“ ‘ Because why ?’ says you. Because Brinnilow, the man 
my mate and me was a-talking about at the time when you 
screeched — ” 

“Yes, yes! Goon!” 

“Brinnilow’s in Norwich Jail. In Norwich Jail is Brinnilow, 
sentenced to hang for murder. That’s where be is, if any one 
who should be a foreigner, and not able to read the noospapers, 
should wish to know ; and unless a reprieve comes afore eight 
o’clock to-morrow morning, Brinnilow’s a dead man — that’s what 
Brinnilow is. A dead man in a nightcap and a hemp cravat. 
Screeching again ? If you was my wife, missus, you should be 
broke of that. Broke of that, indeed, you should be. Somebody 
lend a hand here — the woman’s in a fit !” 


CHAPTER IV. 
PLEASANT FINDS HER MASTER. 


Waking, cold and weak and giddy, from what seemed like a 
lapse back into the days of delirious semi-consciousness which 
had succeeded to the shock and the injury of months before. 
Pleasant Weather found herself lying on a hard horse-hair sofa 
in a dingy little back room, full of greasy kitchen smells and di- 
lapidated furniture, with the slatternly young waitress bending 
over her, applying something wet to her forehead. 

“You’ve been poorly,” the woman said, in answer to her whis- 
pered question. “ A fit, the chemist told us it was, and not the 
first you’ve had, judging by your looks and the half-healed wound 
on your head, where the hair has been cut away. You had no 
business to be out by yourself, and in such hard weather, he said ; 
and all we could do was to hold you till you stopped throwing 
yourself about, and then let you lie quiet till you came to your 
senses again.” 

“ I am myself again. Let me get up.” 

“ I’m not stopping you. There’s nobody but the boy to attend 
to the customers. But there’s a shilling to pay for the chemist’s 
trouble, and tenpence for your breakfast, before you go.” 

Pleasant Weather settled the claim from the little store of sil- 
ver she carried in a worp, old-fashioned purse, and mollified the 
slatternly waitress with the gift of a small coin. She put on the 
bonnet which the woman restored to her, shook out the creases 
from her disordered dress, and pinned her shawl across her sunk- 
en bosom. Then she went out of the greasy parlor and passed 
through the shop without looking round. 

Snow was falling in heavy fiakes when she reached the street. 
Scarcely a human creature seemed to be abroad that bitter day. 
Thinly shawled, lightly shod, she went on through the deepening 
drifts of snow-powder. And the flakes kept falling — falling — 
and covering the footprints that she left behind. 

Early as it yet was, daylight was already waning. Her unfa- 


238 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


miliarity with the streets she traversed made her progress difficult. 
Overtaking, even with her impeded gait, a miserable creature of 
the vagrant race, who crept along, half-frozen, from door-step to 
door-step, shouldering the stump of a worn-out shovel, she stopped 
and asked the boy — for a boy it proved to be — to direct her by 
the nearest way to the jail. 

The boy gave his blue nose a wipe with his ragged sleeve, 
and considered. Pleasant Weather showed him a penny. Stim- 
ulated by the sight of the coin, the boy scratched his head. 
Pleasant showed him another penny. The boy grinned, became 
thoughtful, grinned again, and finally delivered himself in the fol- 
lowing terms : 

“ Norwich Jail ? On a ’ill it stands — calls it the Castle Til, 
they dus. Can you hear me, missus ?” 

“ I hear you.” 

“ It’s my chest being bad makes me talk so queer. I slep’ un- 
der a archway last night, and it’s took my voice away — froze it 
in my chest, like. Give me the tuppence.” 

“ When you have told me how to get to the place I want, you 
shall have it.” 

“ Norwich Jail stands on the Castle ’111, lower down, and nigh 
by the castle : by way of King Street, London Street and the Cat- 
tle Market will be the shortest way there, missus. Give me the 
tuppence.” 

“ Take it. Stop. I’m a stranger in this place — the names of 
the streets puzzle me. Show me the way to the jail, and you 
shall have threepence more. Sixpence more if you take me from 
there back to the railway station. I shall put my hand upon your 
shoulder — so — to steady myself, not being strong in my limbs.” 

“ All right, missus. Come along.” 

They moved on together. The falling snow whitened them, 
the dreary day grew grayer and more desolate as the woman and 
the boy traversed the lonely streets. 

In less time than might have been expected the huge area of 
the Norwich Cattle Market presented itself to view, intersected by 
the iron railings of its empty pens, traversed by its broad avenues, 
surrounded by the purlieus of the old town — a spectacle of emp- 
tiness and abandoned desolation. And dominant above it, loom- 
ing threateningly against its background of wintry sky, its stern 
and rugged outlines unsoftened by the thickly-falling snow, rose 


DREAMS. 


239 


the ancient keep, once the “ white flower ” of the castles of the 
eastern counties to Norman knights and men-at-arms. And be- 
low it, inside the line of what was once the castle ditch, huddled 
a squat, unsightly edifice — the county jail. 

Her guide pointed it out with his shovel, pressing closely to her 
side. 

“ The jail. Down there, where I’m a-pointing. Folks say there’s 
a man in there going to be hung to-morrow morning. I never 
see ,a man hung, but I know a chap who did, and he said i]^ was 
prime. Did you ever see a man hung, missus ?” 

She paid no more outward heed to his words, or the loathsome 
contact of his foul and ragged garments, than if she had been the 
statue of a woman carved jn ice ; only she struck her hands to- 
gether wildly, and made as if she would have torn at those grim 
unyielding walls with them, and uttered a moaning cry. A wolf 
might have howled so to her trapped cub across some desolate 
ravine. And the echo that came back to her across the interven- 
ing space came back so shrill and changed in tone that it might 
have been an answer. 

Her guide crept from her side noiselessly, and scudded away, 
barefooted, through the snow. No need to wait for the money ; 
he had the woman’s stolen purse hidden away among his rags. 
For an instant the clouds in the north-east parted, and the glow- 
ing disc of the sun looked redly down upon the world before the 
icy fog was drawn before it like an impenetrable curtain, shut- 
ting out all appeal to the Mercy above from the misery below. 


CHAPTER V. 

DREAMS. 

Dreams of days and nights strangely confused and intermin- 
gled ; dreams of solitude, sometimes broken in upon by grave 
ofiicial looks and stern official accents; dreams of high white 
walls, broken by a barred and grated window, high out of reach, 
only accessible to passing cloud or bird shadows, and outward 
light and air ; dreams of feverish nights spent in pacing a stone 
pavement, or, wakeful, lying on a low truckle-bed, listening to 


240 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


echoing steps receding farther and farther away down long and 
resonant galleries; dreams of the galleries themselves, traversed 
in slow procession, and dreams of winding iron staircases, end- 
ing in a paved court-yard ; dreams of rumbling wheels — a dream, 
thrice repeated, of a vast hall or chamber, lighted by a great roof 
lantern, and piled up from floor to ceiling with faces, some of 
them well known, all bent upon one central object — that object 
the dreamer ; dreams which are strangely real by night, and ab- 
solutely so on waking. 

A dream of a grave voice, succeeding other voices, and seeming 
to question the sleeping man. Dreamlike, a voice replying, and 
though changed and feeble, most like the dreamer’s own ; a dream 
of a voice more solemn than any of the others, speaking of death 
and of the world to come. 

Those rumbling wheels succeeding, and the awful hush and 
quiet of a prison cell, after the noise and bustle of a crowded 
court of justice. 

A dream of a familiar face, of a kindly white-haired gentle- 
man, with traces of sorrow and anxiety deeply lined upon it. 
Seen across the barrier of a long deal-table, at each end of which 
sits a warder of the prison, silent and watchful ; a dream of an 
old servant, bent and feeble, sobbing and apparently bowed down 
with grief ; a dream of a grave clergyman who has much to say 
concerning repentance and justification by faith. And through 
all the homily, a dream of hammering — hammering in the court- 
yard beneath this barred window, out of which one can see noth- 
ing but the sky. A dream of something black and grim and 
awful, slowly growing into shape most horrible and dread. But 
more fraught with terror than all these visions, the presence so 
awful in its stillness, that stands beside the sleeper’s pillow in the 
lonely, soundless night, looking in his eyes with eyes that he re- 
members, and holding out its hand. A dream, that last, which 
brings the cold drops of agony out upon the dreamer’s forehead, 
and wakens him with the loud beatings of his heart. A dream 
full of agony and terror. But scarcely worse to bear than the 
dream which haunts the captive always, and of which he is con- 
scious even in the midst of other dreams. The dream of fruitless, 
hopeless longing, of passionate, empty yearning for one sight 
never seen, sleeping or waking ; one voice never heard, waking or 
sleeping. Her face and her voice. 


ON THE WAY. 


241 


And Time flying* slowly on, borne on the bats’-wings of these 
visions. Time which shall soon change the promise conveyed in 
the words, I will not betray^ into the assertion, I have not be- 
trayed, After which no more dreaming, but the silence and the 
quiet of a shameful grave in some lost, forgotten nook of that 
dreadful place; a silence and a quiet unbroken by any sound, save 
when the shuffling footsteps of a gang of guarded criminals shall 
pass over the nameless stone that covers the fallen head. 

How many hours left? Nineteen. She may come before to- 
morrow. Even yet. 


CHAPTER VI. 

ON THE WAY. 

The Norwich Express, plunging out of Liverpool Street Sta- 
tion, exchanges the gas-lighted obscurity of a foggy London day- 
break for the frosty brilliance of a snowy morning in the coun- 
try almost in the twinkling of an eye. 

It is not tempting weather to travel in, and even though to- 
morrow is Christmas Eve the express contains few passengers. 
There are ugly rumors abroad of trains snowed up in the north- 
ern and south-eastern counties, waiting to be dug out by main 
force of pickaxe and shovel, wielded by sturdy gangs of navvies. 
Nearly everybody gets out at Ely, except a business-looking first- 
class passenger for Norwich, whose luggage consists of a small 
portmanteau and a black valise ; and nobody gets in except, at 
the very minute of starting, a bull-necked, bristly-bearded, rough- 
greatcoated third-class traveller, who chews tobacco and carries 
a brown carpet-bag. And the train, leaving clouds of steam and 
lurid trails of glowing cinders behind it, goes speeding over the 
iron road, devouring the snow-covered landscape by mouthfuls, 
as it were, of miles, with the messenger of Life and the messen- 
ger of Death aboard her. 

Her progress is much delayed. Night has fairly closed in be- 
fore the old city springs out of the level landscape and the jour- 
ney is at an end. Leaving the iron horse provendering on coal 
and water in its own particular stable^ we follow the footsteps of 

16 


242 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


the man with the black valise and the man who carries the brown 
carpet-bag, both being bound to the same destination. 

The only cab which is to be had on this inclement night is 
chartered by the business-looking first-class passenger who carries 
the black valise. The address he gives the driver is, “ The Coun- 
ty Jail.” 

The hoarse- voiced, bristly-chinned third-class passenger is left 
stranded at the station. Not a vehicle is attainable. He pro- 
cures a guide, with some trouble and at a high rate of remuner- 
ation, and shouldering his brown carpet-bag, of which he is ex- 
ceedingly careful — proceeds to tramp it through the snowy streets 
of Norwich in the direction of the County Jail. When, at last, 
its black boundary walls loom before him out of the darkness, he 
is so numbed with the piercing cold that it is some time before 
he can beat as much life into his frozen fingers as is needed for 
the ringing of the outer lodge bell. Three minutes elapse be- 
fore the little iron wicket in the great iron gate opens, and a 
turnkey’s face appears in a halo of lantern-light. 

“ Oh, it’s you, is it ? I thought as much,” the turnkey says, 
clanking his keys ; “ we expected you before lock-up.” 

The man with the brown carpet-bag explains that the train 
was late. 

“ The train was late, eh ?” says the turnkey. “ Pay the lad 
and send him away, and come in out of the cold ; for it is cold, 
surely. Ah ! so the train was late, you say ?” 

The turnkey leads the way across a paved quadrangle, at pres- 
ent ankle-deep in snow, towards the entrance of the- Jail, over 
against which stands the governor’s house. There are lights in 
the windows of the governor’s house, and the sound of a piano, 
touched by a light hand, cheerfully tinkles in the distance. For 
the governor is a family man, with a wife and young daughters 
who can be merry sometimes, even in the atmosphere of despair. 

More clanking of keys behind the inner gate; the man with 
the brown carpet-bag admitted by another turnkey, to whom he 
explains that circumstance of the train being late. 

“ Why, not to deceive you, it don’t matter,” says the second 
turnkey ; “ you won’t need a steady hand to-morrow. Even if 
the train had kept time you would have been late, for the re- 
prieve has come before you. This way for your supper and 
your bed.” 


REPRIEVED. 


243 


CHAPTER VII. 

REPRIEVED. 

Morning, filtering unwillingly through barred windows and 
heavily-grated skylights, half-blinded with snow ; the morning 
— ushered into this dismal place with groans and sighs and curses 
of impotent desperation — of Christmas Eve. 

It is early, the prison clock being on the stroke of six, but the 
prison chaplain and the prison surgeon are waiting in the gov- 
ernor’s oflSce for the governor. The hammering, that made yes- 
terday and the day before it hideous, breaks out again in the 
court-yard where the prison vans are kept ; but there is a less 
ominous significance in the sound to-day, as, with creaking and 
rending, the black beams are dismembered one from another, 
and relegated to their usual position of dust and obscurity. 

The governor, a fresh-colored, portly gentleman, with a mili- 
tary preciseness in his dress and a military heaviness in his firm 
step, after a short delay has joined those who ^re waiting in 
the oflSce. He carries papers — a telegram and an oflBcial-looking 
document — in his hand. His coming sets the party in motion. 
A warder going before, heralded by more clanking of keys and 
opening and shutting of iron gates, leads the way to the con- 
demned cell. 

The heavy iron trellis-gate which closes it is unlocked, the 
inner door of wood, strengthened with more iron and closed by 
a massive running-bolt, is opened. There is a peep-hole in this 
second door, closed with a slide, through which the warder looked 
before unbolting it, and announced, in a whisper, “Not in bed; 
sitting at the table.” 

He is sitting at the table, fully dressed, when they go in. An 
oflScial watcher rises from his seat on the bedside and salutes the 
governor with n^ilitary precision. The prisoner, whose back is 
turned to the new-comers, never stirs at the slight bustle that 
accompanies their entrance. He has writing materials before' 
him. The hand that holds the pen lies relaxed upon the table, 


244 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


the other shades his face as he leans upon his elbow. Perhaps 
the prisoner is asleep. Under this supposition, they touch him 
gently on the shoulder. He shows no sign of waking. Under 
this supposition, they shake him — not roughly — and call in his 
ear. He does not move or answer. An obstinate prisoner this. 

“ Prisoner One Hundred and Twenty, it is my official duty to 
convey to you the information that the Home Secretary, after 
earnest consideration of your case, has advised Her Most Gracious 
Majesty to delay the execution of the capital sentence passed 
upon you, with a view to obtaining more reliable medical evidence 
than has yet been given with regard to your mental state at the 
time of the commission of the crime of which, according to your 
own confession, and the finding of the jury at your trial, you 
stand guilty. Prisoner One Hundred and Twenty, you are re- 
prieved.” 

Still not a sign, not a sound to indicate that the prisoner hears. 
Take his hand down from his face now, and look at him as it 
falls helplessly to his side. There is comprehension in his eyes 
of the words that have been spoken, but intelligence has been 
stricken out at one blow from the drawn and distorted face. Let 
human Mercy reprieve, respite, or pardon the prisoner condemned 
so lately by stern Justice to die a shameful death — another pow- 
er has been beforehand, and stamped on every par^yzed limb, 
in every paralyzed feature, its own irrevocable sentence of impris- 
onment for life. 


CHAPTER VHI. 

THE SHADOW FALLS. 

An hour later, Mrs. Kavanagh’s elderly maid, carrying a small 
tray with the usual morning cup of tea and thin slice of bread- 
and-butter upon it, knocked at the door of her mistress’s bed- 
room. The door was locked. The woman knocked again, and 
listened anxiously for any sounds that might be overheard of 
moving on the part of the inmate of the room. 

In another moment the key was turned in the lock, her mis- 


THE SHADOW FALLS. 


246 


tress admitted her, and locked the door again behind her. The 
woman’s face, as it looked into that other, so changed and worn 
with mental agony and nights of unrest, betrayed the anxiety 
she felt. “ No sleep last night. Walking up and down — down 
and up, as usual,” was her unspoken comment. “ How long is 
this going on ? Where and how will it end ?” 

Her mistress drank the tea eagerly, but rejected the bread-and- 
butter with feverish disgust, and resumed her uneven walk back- 
ward and forward across the bedroom — from the door to the 
window, up and down from the foot of the bed, which bore no 
traces of occupation by a sleeper — into the boudoir beyond, and 
so back once more to her original starting-point, as aimlessly and 
as tirelessly maintaining her unceasing motion as some wild 
creature pent in a cage. Her loose morning-robe hung in folds 
over her wasted bosom ; her sleeves dropped back from the arms 
that had lost their firm, healthful roundness, as she impatieotly 
pushed back the plentiful light-brown hair that was coiled in an 
ample knot behind her head and strayed about her ears. A few 
lines of silver had always mingled with its beauty. The lines 
had widened to streaks — streaks which, almost visibly, encroachd 
upon one another. It had been her husband’s boast that she had 
never looked half her actual age. A stranger seeing her, worn 
and sunken as she now appeared, would have guessed at the 
number of years unsparingly — a stranger would have added, 
“The wreck of what must have been a beautiful woman — 
twenty years ago.” 

The elderly maid drew aside the window-curtains and unbarred 
the shutters, letting the cold December daylight penetrate into 
the room through the softly-tinted silk blinds. She renewed 
the nearly-extinguished fires in both rooms, moving softly and 
with elaborate care not to disturb her mistress. 

“ When will you have done ?” Mrs. Kavanagh broke out, im- 
patiently. “ You move as silently, you look as solemnly, as if 
there were death in the house. Are there any letters? Have 
the newspapers come ? You don’t know? You haven’t looked ? 
Perhaps they have been taken into the library. How dare you 
disobey my orders ? Every newspaper that comes into the house 
is to be brought first to me.” 

A violent fit of coughing interrupted her speech. The elderly 
maid hurried to her assistance, and supported her to a chair. 


246 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


She beat the air with her hands in the agonizing endeavor to re- 
cover her breath. Slowly, and by degrees, under the anxious 
ministrations of the faithful attendant, the more distressing 
symptoms of the spasmodic bronchial attack under which Mrs. 
Kavanagh was laboring subsided. She made use of her recovered 
breath — she employed her unimpeded speech, in reiterating her 
order with regard to the newspapers. 

“ Go and get them. Tell your master, if necessary, that I have 
sent for them. Do you hear ?” 

The elderly maid replied, quietly and respectfully, “ My mas- 
ter is not in the house, ma’am ; my master breakfasted early, and 
drove the dog- cart to the station to catch the early train. He 
left a message for you, with his love, that he had gone to Nor- 
wich, and was not to be expected back till late in the afternoon.” 

She took her tray and left the room. Outside the door she 
shook her head. “ Worse and worse, for all the doctor says,” 
she muttered. “ She doesn’t speak like herself — she doesn’t look 
like herself. She’s not fit to be alone, and yet she will have no- 
body with her. The news that brings me word of my young 
mistress’s home-coming will be good news to me.” 

Mrs. Kavanagh resumed her restless walk while the servant was 
absent. In a few moments the woman returned. One letter, di- 
rected to her mistress, had arrived by the early post. The boy 
who usually brought the newspapers was late on that particular 
morning. 

Her mistress impatiently dismissed her with orders to watch for 
the coming of the messenger. She locked the door when she was 
once more alone, and not till then looked at the letter. The first 
glance at the handwriting of the address told her from whom it 
came. The tears sprang to her burning eyes — she put her lips to 
the paper on which Rosalind’s hand had rested, and crushed the 
letter against her bosom as if it had power to allay the anguish 
of her tortured heart. “ News — news from my darling ! I can 
hardly make out the words, my eyes ache so. I can’t hold the 
paper in these unsteady hands. Oh, my God ! if she only knew 
to what kind of creature she sends her tender, innocent kisses, 
and her pretty, loving words ! I’m not worthy to read her letter 
standing — I’ll read it on my knees.” She dropped on her knees 
and read the letter. “ She and her husband have had enough of 
Paris. Her father has frightened them with accounts of my ill- 


THE SHADOW FALLS. 


247 


ness. They’re coming home at once. Oh, stay away, for Heaven’s 
sake! How can I bear any more agony than I’m bearing now? To 
have her close to me — to see her, and not to dare to take her in 
my arms, lest the touch of me should blight her — to be afraid to 
kiss her, lest my guilty lips should blister her innocent cheek ! 
What shall I do? Cable to Paris! Too late! But, on the 
chance of stopping them, I will !” 

She rose to her feet with the difficulty of physical weakness, and 
hurried into the adjoining room. Here stood her writing-table, 
with its load of papers, its row of prettily-bound account-books, 
and all the dainty paraphernalia which the mistress of a house 
finds necessary to the settlement of her arrears of correspondence 
and the conduct of her business affairs. In one of the drawers 
belonging to it were several of the blank forms issued by the Sub- 
marine Telegraph Company. In her feverish haste she tore the 
drawer out bodily and scattered its contents upon the carpet. Be- 
fore she could stoop to collect them the musical clock upon the 
mantel-piece — a handsome specimen of French buhl and brass- 
work, surmounted by a figure of Time — struck the half-hour after 
seven, and played its fragment of an operatic air. In an instant 
the unhappy woman’s thoughts were diverted from Rosalind — in 
an instant her feverish energy deserted her — the feverisl| brill- 
iance faded out of her eyes as she remembered what event the 
expiration of another half-hour might bring to pass. The distant 
opening and closing of the hall door vibrated through her nerves 
like an electric shock. Had the newspapers arrived? Was the 
maid, with the inquisitiveness of her profession and class, looking 
through them before she brought them to her mistress? Should 
she see, upon the opening of the door, written in her attendant’s 
face, the knowledge of the horrible secret that was dragging its 
guilty possessor, inch by inch, nearer to the grave ? What might 
not have happened in the twenty-four hours that had elapsed since 
the publication of the last intelligence from Norwich Jail ? Had 
the prisoner’s courage faltered ? — his determination been shaken 
in the contemplation of the approach of death? — had he be- 
trayed? — would he yet betray the woman who had bidden him 
kill — and save her? 

The minutes were going by. Not long to wait now for the 
newspapers. Would they contain, in default of that revelation 
which should strike woe and agony and desolation unutterable 


248 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


home to the hearts that loved her, the news of pardon or respite ? 
Was she so lost a creature that the thought of such a result brought 
her no relief — nothing but increase of dread? “Do I wish him 
dead ?” she asked herself — and the answer came back inexorably 
in the aflSrmative. She wished him dead ! What peace of mind 
was there for her as long as he lived the sharer of her ghastly se- 
cret? None. 

The hands of the clock moved on. At eight o’clock the exe- 
cution had been appointed to take place. At eight o’clock, if 
nothing had happened to prevent the law from taking its final 
course, this agony of suspense must end. 

A London reporter, in the exercise of his profession, had visited 
Ketton Old Church a few days before. The published record of 
his visit contained, among various local details, the account of an 
interview with the parish sexton. 

“ I was one of them that rang the peal of bells for the old Squire’s 
wedding,” the sexton was reported to have said, “ with others that 
are most of ’em dead and gone to-day. I rang ’em again when 
his only son was born; I tolled the great bell, singly, for the 
old Squire’s burial; and if twenty rectors stand in my way I 
shall toll it on the day on which the young Squire dies.” 

She dragged up the blinds roughly and clumsily, and undid the 
bolts of the French windows that opened upon the terrace, and 
threw them wide. There was no wind, though the keen, icy atmos- 
phere pierced her to the marrow, and for the moment took away 
her breath. But she went out, thinly shod and lightly clad as 
she was, upon the terrace, and stood there, listening and looking. 
Far and near upon the face of the desolate landscape not a sign 
of life presented itself ; not even a half-frozen bird rustled in the 
yews and laurels of the half-buried garden ; the cold-gray sky 
seemed like an overarching vault of stone. And steadily, re- 
lentlessly, ceaselessly, as it had fallen for days past, fell the cruel, 
beautiful, pitiless snow. 

She coughed and turned back, shivering, into the room. The 
melting snow that clung to her shoes and the borders of her gar- 
ments, made patches of wet on the delicate carpet. She ap 
proached the mantel-piece for the purpose of looking at the clock, 
and, for the first time catching her own reflection in the glass 


THE SHADOW FALLS. 


249 


surmounting it, drew back with a shudder. And as she looked, 
with hollow, conscience-stricken eyes, upon the ruin of her beau- 
ty, the reflection of another face glided into view from behind 
the image of her own — the face of Pleasant Weather. 

She knew the face, changed and marred as it was. She recog- 
nized the house-keeper, and her first impulse was one of anger. 
She spoke to the women harshly, pointing to the window by 
which she had entered from the garden. 

“ What do you mean by intruding upon me in my room after 
this fashion ?” she said. “ What do you want here ? Better go 
by the way you came before I ring for the servants to turn you 
out of the house.” 

“ Ring for the servants, mistress,” said Pleasant. “ What I have 
got to say can be said before them ; what I have got to do can 
be done before them.” She laughed — her hollow, mirthless 
laugh; she fastened her strange black eyes devouringly upon 
Mrs. Kavanagh’s face and figure. “ You were looking in the 
glass when I came in, mistress. Not much* in the face it gives 
you back to-day that might serve you for the tempting of a man 
to his ruin at your need — nor ever was, to my thinking. But 
one thought different. You know him I speaks of — my master; 
my master that I carried in these arms as a baby ; my master as 
Pve nursed and watched and tended — child and man; my mas- 
ter as lies in jail to-day for doings that were your doings — doomed 
to die a death that should be your death !” 

Exposure had almost extinguished her voice ; she spoke in a 
hoarse, deep whisper, and eked her meaning out with the fierce 
glances of her wild, black eyes, and the gestures of her lean, 
brown hands. 

“ How does Pleasant come to know the secret might you ask, 
mistress, by those twitchings of your dead-white lips ? Through 
watching and following, I makes answer; through creeping and 
tracking, and laying low more times than one. The folk I come 
of are cunning in their ways, and of long patience when waiting 
is like to sweeten revenge for mouths that water for it. What 
grudge did I owe you and yours, ask you dumbly with those 
lips again? For taking of my darling’s heart from me, his al- 
most mother; for wringing it, and fevering it, and poisoning his 
days and nights with bitterness and longing. ’Twas another I 
suspected his mind set on at first; but Time and Chance opens 


250 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


ray eyes to the truth. When I tells him what knowledge has 
come to me through watching and spying, one evening, betwixt 
dusk and dark ; when I tells him how you and your sweetheart 
as was, but is no longer, meets by the Shrieking Pits out yonder 
on the sly; when I tells him — I wish my tongue had rotted in 
my head before the words were spoken ! — as much of what passes 
between you as has reached my ears ; and how, that if money 
be not found to pay off your threatening 5aw, you’re a ruined 
woman ; when I hears him cry out bitterly, as if his heart were 
split with a knife-stroke, then I guesses it — not afore. Takes he 
straightway to watching and spying, nigh as cleverly as me, and 
finds the rest of the secret out for himself. Then one night 
comes he to my room and lays hands on something that I keeps 
by me for life and death, kill or cure. And when I expostulated 
with him — having kept it by me for another purpose than the 
purpose of drabbing vermin that troubles you — what is it I gets 
in answer? ‘I love her,’ my master says, ‘heart and soul I’m 
hers ! Life or death. I’m hers ! Our fates are linked together, 
and the end that comes to her will find me ready and waiting.’ 
So I denies him no more. And that night the footsteps, which 
have been drawing nearer and nearer for months past, stops dead.” 
If she had known whose footsteps those had been, and through 
what tangled mazes of Time and Circumstance they had travelled 
on to their appointed halting-place ! But she never was to know. 
She struck her hands together with the old passionate gesture, 
and went on : 

“ Then happens what you knows on, and Pleasant Weather is 
struck down helpless when she should be up and doing. Out 
of hospital comes I, on this cruel day, months after, with a blank 
emptiness where memory should be, and even my darling’s name 
grown so strange in my ears that the mere hearing of it, spoken 
by a stranger’s lips, strikes me down like a bolt from Heaven. 
But my blood comes back to me, and it is : to the jail, before 
’tis too late, and speak the words out that will save him, spite of 
the oath he made me swear. So I makes my way there, beats 
upon the stones with my bare hands, and calls to them in au- 
thority to hear me. Says them at the gate, “You’re mad or 
drunk, or both together.’ Then it is borne into my mind that, 
though one way may have failed, another one may answer. 
Back to this place I tramps, my purse having been stolen. 


THE SHADOW FALLS. 


251 


Traraps out of nine miles five, and gets a lift in a straw-wagon 
for the other four. Night passes — how I hardly know — and 
morning finds me waiting and lurking and watching for the 
lucky moment as is to bring me face to face, mistress, with you. 
Now you know how I come here and why I come, mistress. 
Back with me to Norwich Jail as fast as carriage-wheels and 
horseflesh can carry us, and tell the folk there what you know. 
Time flows on quickly, and Fate ; but Pleasant will outstrip ’em 
both, no fear of it. Do you shake your head, mistress? By 
my God ! weak as I was not long since, I have strength enough 
now. Strength enough to tear your heart out, if need be, and 
carry thatlo Norwich Jail, and bid them as shut their ears to 
Pleasant’s pleading read your secret there.” 

She held up her lean, brown fingers, curved like talons, and 
shook them in the other’s face. 

The conscience-stricken, terrified woman before her crouched 
and shuddered as the furious creature drew nearer — nearer still. 
Her eyes dilated with the vacant fixity of terror ; her loosened 
hair had fallen about her face. In silence they confronted one 
another — the woman whom he had loved, and the woman who 
had loved him. And, breaking that deadly silence, came the 
musical chime of the clock upon the mantel-piece striking the 
hour of eight. Close upon that sound another followed: the 
first deep, sonorous stroke of the church bell. 

Mrs. Kavanagh raised her head. She drew herself to her full 
height ; color returned to her lips, light came back into her eyes 
again. As the solemn bell tolled for the second time, she lifted 
her hand. 

“ Too late,” she said. “ Too late to save your master now. 
The bell that rang when the world began for him, rings now 
because it has ended. Listen to the bell.” 

For the third time the bell tolled. In that instant, as she 
turned her head aside. Pleasant Weather sprang upon her. The 
two women struggled and swayed together, locked in a deadly 
embrace. 

With those frenzied eyes staring close to her own, with that 
fierce breath beating on her cheek, with those lean, brown fingers 
clutching at her throat, courage and the love of life awoke in 
her. The rare strength that is associated with perfect physical 
development, the noble stature that distinguished her above 


252 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


other women, did her service now in the hour of desperate need. 
But the terrible ordeal through which she had passed, the wast- 
ing anxiety, the agonizing dread of the past and of the present, 
had slowly but surely sapped the foundations of that magnifi- 
cent vitality. Even in the moment when she most seemed to 
prevail, a deadly stupor crept upon and overwhelmed her — a 
numbed sensation she had felt of late weighed upon her limbs 
— the cold drops of exhaustion broke out upon her forehead. 
Her eyes closed, her muscles relaxed, the worn out heart ceased 
to beat. As the body sank downward — downward — Pleasant 
Weather sank with it, and crouched upon the carpet beside it, 
waiting, in her frantic lust of blood, to crush out the first signs 
of reviving consciousness with those strenuous, sinewy, lean, 
brown hands. And the bell sounded for the fourth time. 

There came a sound of hurrying footsteps outside. There 
came a knocking at the locked door. A voice cried, “ Mamma, 
mamma, open the door ! — it is I, your daughter, come back to 
you. Oh, for God’s sake, open the door !” The eager hands 
tried the bedroom door, and the door that led into the drawing- 
room. Locked these, also ! More hurrying of feet, and a man’s 
voice calling, “ Break open the door !” 

Pleasant Weather rose from her crouching position ; she looked 
this way and that, dazedly, uncertainly. Even as she hesitated 
a dreadful change passed over the face of Mrs. Kavanagh ; the 
eyes opened — fixed in the immutable stare of death — and the 
dying hand, at the bidding of the inexorable Will, pointed to the 
way of escape. 

The French windows, standing open, with the snow drifting — 
drifting in. With one wild glance behind her. Pleasant went 
out by them quickly. She crossed the terrace and traversed the 
garden unseen ; and the falling snow obliterated her footprints 
as she went. 

As they broke in the door, the bell sounded for the eighth 
time, and then stopped. The news of the reprieve had come to 
Ketton Old Church. 


THE JOURNAL— CONCLUDED. 


253 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE JOURNAL— CONCLUDED. 

“ Selbrigg Hall, February 2nd, 1887. 

“So with the course of time the events foreshadowed in my 
dream of that night at the inn at Hull have come to pass. The 
warning so mysteriously conveyed to me has been fulfilled. And 
upon the old house of my fathers — across the well-remembered 
scenes of my boyish remembrances, even as the shadow descend- 
ed in the vision — the shadow has fallen now. Of sorrow and 
disaster and death those nearest and dearest to me have tasted 
the bitterness — a bitterness unmingled for them, God be thanked, 
with disgrace or shame ! The cruel secret of her tortured past 
lies buried with Hawley in his grave — lies buried with her in 
hers ; and is as surely hidden in my breast, and perhaps in one 
other stirred by living pulses, as though it were covered, yards 
deep, with the church-yard mould. 

“ Dead ! Catherine dead ! Strange, strange to write the word 
in connection with her. Strange to speak it. Stranger to see 
the place vacant which once she held, to miss the familiar voice, 
the familiar face ; to know the gracious charm which drew all 
hearts towards my brother’s wife, and made home home in cor- 
dial verity, broken, dispelled, vanished, like the December snows. 
Perhaps, most strange of all, to recognize, as I must, in the Hand 
that dealt the blow, mercy to hers — mercy to her. 

“ It was on the day fixed for the execution. Her health had 
been failing for some time ; her condition, aggravated by anxiety 
and suspense, was such as to give my brother cause for anxiety. 
Rosalind and Philip were on their way back from Paris — my 
niece firmly persuaded, as I learn from her husband, that her 
presence was urgently needed at her mother’s side. In absence, 
the slight estrangement that had of late arisen between them 
was forgotten. Nothing was remembered then but the faithful 
love, the tender cherishing of years. Lady Lidyard and her 
husband travelled all night, and arrived at an early hour in the 


254 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


morning. As they stepped into the carriage, waiting to take 
them from the station, the bell of Ketton Old Church began 
to toll — they knew well why and for whom. A sad, strange 
welcome for a bride and bridegroom. But sadder still the home- 
coming, when frightened servants met them at the door ; when 
they tried, vainly, to gain entrance into Mrs. Kavanagh’s room, 
and, alarmed by the silence within, perhaps with some dreadful 
premonition of the truth overshadowing them already, sum- 
moned assistance, and caused the door to be broken in. 

“The French windows leading to the terrace stood widely 
open to the piercing December cold and the heavily falling De- 
cember snow. Entrance might have been gained that way, if 
any one had thought of it. With the white flakes resting un- 
melted on her hair and on the bosom that was never to stir 
again to the throbbing of life’s warm pulses, they found her 
lying dead. 

“ Dead ! In loneliness, without a loving heart to lean upon, 
withoijt a loving hand to cling to in that supreme and awful 
moment — the Mysterious Messenger had found her. 

“ Dead ! In my dreams I see, as I saw it afterwards, the 
agony and terror of that frozen look. It changed and softened 
by-and-by. The last remembrance of her that her husband and 
her daughter cherish is one of calm, unearthly beauty ; of stern- 
ly-smiling repose. Of the grief of those who loved her I say 
nothing. An anguish like theirs only time may soften and heal. 
Perhaps, in the constant devotion of his son and daughter, in 
the love of their children, by-and-by my brother may find con- 
tent, if not happiness, in the years to come. 

“ Upon one other who loved her — how madly, how devotedly, 
with what terrible self-sacrifice I dare not even now suffer ray- 
self to guess — the blow, if ever it falls, will fall with merciful 
lightness. A few days since I visited Norwich with a purpose. 
My purpose took me to the jail. My order, obtained from the 
authorities, admitted me without delay. The prisoner whom I 
desired to visit has been removed to the jail hospital, a brighter, 
more cheerful place than one would expect to find within such 
gloomy gates. There were bright texts about the whitewashed 
walls, and a handful or two of spring flowers standing in a com- 
mon mug on the deal-table sweetened the air. The prisoner 


THE JOURNAL— CONCLUDED. 


255 


whom I went to visit is paralyzed, but he suffers little pain, and 
there is reason to hope that he may even recover the partial use 
of the suspended physical faculties one day. Memory of the 
past is a merciful blank to this prisoner. His consciousness of 
the present is the consciousness of a child. The worn and faded 
creature with the dim black eyes and the black hair turning 
gray, who watches him with such an agony of solicitude and 
care, has been his attendant ever since he can remember. He is 
content in her presence, and she only lives to serve and cherish 
him in his need. 

“This prisoner stood under sentence of death a little while 
ago, but merciful recognition in high quarters of certain exoner- 
ating features in the case dictated a reprieve, which, in the face 
of later contingencies which have arisen, may, it is not unlikely, 
even be followed by the pardon of the Crown. 

“Little more to write — little more to tell. Few the blank 
pages remaining in the book. The end once reached — the record 
once completed, what remains ? Destruction. For I recognize, 
as I never recognized before, that there is danger in keeping it. 
My heart will never betray her secret ; my lips will never speak 
it, but in event of my illness — in event of my sudden death ; to 
any prying eye — to any idle curiosity — my hand might reveal it 
as long as this Journal remains undestroyed. 

“ Burn- it ! Burn it ! The portrait, too — the weapon which 
Fate gave to her dead enemy. I have never looked upon it 
since that night, but ever since I have worn it, hidden about me. 
Burn them both before it is too late !” 

CONCLUSION OF THE EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL. 

The fire had devoured the written pages and reduced the leath- 
er covers of the Journal to a crumbling mass. When George Kav- 
anagh took the portrait from its hiding-place and dropped it into 
the heart of the red glow, it leaped up in a bright fiame, and, 
in an instant, was gone. 

He took his hat and the knotted stick that had been his com- 
panion over many a mile of rough walking at home and afar, 
and went out. The sun was setting as he passed over Yelmerton 
Common. Upon a knoll, covered with withered heath, between 


256 


DRAGON’S TEETH. 


the matted stems of which the young fronds of bracken were 
already springing, a man sat with his elbows on his knees and 
his face turned towards the deepening glow of crimson in the 
west. A child played at his feet — a dark-skinned, elfin-locked 
little creature. 

Both the man and the child were of the gypsy race. The 
smoke of the camp-fires of their people rose up against the hori- 
zon little more than a mile away. As George Kavanagh’s glance 
followed the direction of the slanting lines of bluish vapor, the 
old wild longing, the old wandering instinct stirred and revived 
in the vagabond again. He stooped and touched the man upon 
the shoulder. He spoke to the gypsy in the gypsy tongue. The 
man started round and recognized him. 

A few rapid sentences were exchanged, and they parted. 
George Kavanagh nodded to the elfish child and threw a coin 
to her as he turned away. The child snatched at the silver and 
hid it in her dress, and went on playing with a toy she had 
found. It was an empty medicine-bottle of dark-blue glass, and 
she had tied it about the neck with a red string. 

At dawn, upon the morrow, he stood in Ketton Church-yard 
beside a lonely grave. Pale February snowdrops and sturdy 
violets clustered above the heart of the silent sleeper who rested 
there. 

tbe /llbemorg of Catberine Ikavanagb/’ 

So ran the inscription, deeply cut in the cross of polished 
granite that marked the last earthly abiding-place of his broth- 
er’s second wife. 

He stooped and gathered a blossom or two, and hid them in 
his breast, before he moved from the spot. His knapsack was 
strapped upon his back, ready for the journey — his stout stick 
was in his hand — he had written the farewell he dared not trust 
himself to utter, and left it on his table over night. Perhaps 
they were reading it even then. 

Her grave had been made upon a mossy slope rising at the 
southern end of Ketton Church-yard, and sinking away into a 
green valley starred with the golden cups of the daffodils this 
spring. 

Here was another grave with a name on it that he had known 


THE JOURNAL—CONCLUDED. 


257 


— the grave of the murdered man. He paused a moment there 
before he went away. The incense of the vernal fields breathed 
in the keen air that stirred the white locks on his uncovered 
head. The sun shone brightly over the familiar landscape, upon 
which the vagabond’s eyes rested for the last time. No shadow 
darkened on it as he turned away and left them there together. 
Left them there together, waiting — with a few feet of earth, a 
few sods of springing grass between them — until that day when 
all that is hidden shall be revealed, and all human mysteries 
made known before the judgment seat of God. 

17 


THE END. 




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B i y. 





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Mr. Reinhart’s spirited and realistic illustrations are very attractive, 
and contribute to make an unusually handsome book. We have already 
commented upon the earlier chapters of the text ; and the happy blend- 
ing of travel and fiction which we looked forward to with confidence did, 
in fact, distinguish this story among the serials of the year. — N. Y. Even- 
ing Post. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

^^Any of the above works sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the 
United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 


BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON 


JUPITER LIGHTS. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. 
EAST ANGELS. A Novel. IGnio, Cloth, $1 25. 
ANNE. A Novel. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, |1 25. 
FOR THE MAJOR. A Novelette. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

CASTLE NOWHERE. Lake-Country Sketches. IGrao, 
Cloth, $1 00. 

RODMAN THE KEEPER. Southern Sketches. IGrao, 
Cloth, $1 00. 

Delightful touches justify those who see many points of analogy 
between Miss Wool son and George Eliot. — N. Y. Times. 

For tenderness and purity of thought, for exquisitely delicate 
sketching of characters, Miss Woolson is unexcelled among writers 
of fiction. — New Orleans Picayune. 

Characterization is Miss Woolson’s forte. Her men and women • 
are not mere puppets, but original, breathing, and finely contrasted 
creations. — Chicago Tribune. 

Miss Woolson is one of the few novelists of the day who know 
how to make conversation, how to individualize the speakers, how 
to exclude rabid realism without falling into literary formality. — 
N. Y. Tribune. 

Constance Fenimore Woolson may easily become the novelist 
laureate. — Boston Globe. 

Miss AVoolson has a graceful fancy, a ready wit, a polished style, 
and conspicuous dramatic power; while her skill in the develop- 
ment of a story is very remarkable. — London Life. 

Miss Woolson never once follows the beaten track of the orthodox 
novelist, but strikes a new and richly loaded vein wiiich, so far, is 
all her own ; and thus we feel, on reading one of her works, a fresh 
sensation, and w’e put down the book with a sigh to think our pleas- 
ant task of reading it is finished. The author’s lines must have 
fallen to her in very pleasant places ; or she has, perhaps, within 
herself the wealth of womanly love and tenderness she pours so 
freely into all she writes. Such books as hers do much to elevate 
the moral tone of the day — a quality sadly wanting in novels of the 
time. — Whitehall Review, London. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Any of the above worke will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the 
United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 


SEVEN DREAMERS. 


A Collection of Seven Stories. By Annie Trumbull Slos> 
SON. pp. 286. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. 


A charming collection of character sketches and stories — humorous, 
pathetic, and romantic — of New England country life. The volume in- 
cludes “How Faith Came and Went,” “Botany Bay,” “Aunt Randy,” 
“ Fishin’ Jimmy,” “ Butterneggs,” “ Deacon Pheby’s Selfish Natur’,” and 
“ A Speakin’ Ghost.” 


They are of the best sort of “dialect” stories, full of humor and quaint 
conceits. Gathered in a volume, with a frontispiece which is a wonderful 
character sketch, they make one of the best contributions to the light 
literature of this season. — Observer^ N. Y. 

Mrs. Slosson has in these stories explored an entirely new field in fiction, 
and her work has the merit of unquestionable individuality of method as 
well as novelty of theme. — Boston Beacon. 

These stories are redolent of the New England coast — salty, pathetic, 
and grim for the most part, and true to the New England nature, so ret- 
icent, self-contained, and undemonstrative. ... In their peculiar field, 
nothing better has ever been done. — Newark Advertiser. 

Stories told with much skill, tenderness, and kindliness, so much so 
that the reader is drawn powerfully towards the poor subjects of them, 
and soon learns to join the author in looking behind their peculiarities 
and recognizing special spiritual gifts in them. — N. Y. Tribune. 

These stories are of such originality, abounding in deep pathos and 
tenderness, that one finds himself in perfect accord with the writer as he 
reads of the hallucinations of these heroes. — Watchman^ Boston. 

Mrs. Slosson’s sympathetic appreciation, her faithful reproduction of the 
vernacular, and, above all, her tender humor, which in its highest form is 
near akin to pathos, are admirable, and appeal, by the force of her simple, 
direct style, to the heart and head of the reader. — Chicago Tribune. 

Dreamers of a singular kind, they affect us like the inhabitants of 
allegories — a walk of literary art in which we have had no master since 
the pen dropped from the faint and feeble fingers of Hawthorne, and 
which seems native to Mrs. Slosson. — N. Y. Mail and Express. 

The sweetness, the spiciness, the aromatic taste of the forest has crept 
into these tales. — Philadelphia Ledger. 

These tales evince a rare study and knowledge of human nature, and 
the possession of a greater than Prospero’s world to evoke the pert and 
nimble spirit of mirth, or the tears brought by a genuine power of pathos. 
— Hartford Times. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

tr The above work sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United 
States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 


BY ELIZABETH B. CUSTER. 


FOLLOWING THE GUIDON. Illustrated, pp. xx., 369, 

Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. 

The story is a thrillingly interesting one, charmingly told. . . . Mrs. 
Custer gives sketches photograpliic in their fidelity to fact, and touches 
them with the brush of the true artist just enough to give them col- 
oring. It is a charming volume, and the reader who begins it will 
hardly lay it down until it is finished. — Boston Traveller. 

An admirable book. Mrs. Custer was almost as good a soldier as 
her gallant husband, and her book breathes the true martial spirit. — St. 
Louis Republic. 

Mrs. Custer has the faculty of making her reader see and feel with 
her. . , . The whole country is indebted to Mrs. Custer for so faithfully 
depicting phases of a kind of army life now almost passed away. — 
Boston Advertiser. 

The book is crowded with the amusing and exciting details of a life 
strange indeed to those who have spent their time sitting tranquilly at 
home. Her observation is so quick, her descriptive powers so pictu- 
resque, that the camp and the skirmish seem to live before the reader. 
— ^ingjield Republican. 

BOOTS AND SADDLES ; Or, Life in Dakota with Gen- 
eral Custer. With Portrait of General Custer, pp. 312. 
12 mo. Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. 

A book of adventure is interesting reading, especially when it is all 
true, as is the case with “Boots and Saddles.” . . .Mrs. Custer does not 
obtrude the fact that sunshine and solace went with her to tent and 
fort, but it inheres in her narrative none the less, and as a consequence 
“these simple annals of our daily life,” as she calls them, are never 
dull nor uninteresting. — Evangelist, N. Y. 

We have no hesitation in saying that no better or more satisfactory 
life of General Custer could have been written. Indeed, we may as 
well speak the thought that is in us, and say plainly that we know of no 
biographical work anywhere which we count better than this. ... It is 
enriched in every chapter with illustrative anecdotes and incidents, and 
here and there a little life story of pathetic interest is told as an episode. 
— N. T. Commercial Advertiser. 

Every member of a Western garrison will want to read this book ; 
every person in the East who is interested in Western life will want to 
read it, too ; and every girl or boy who has a healthy appetite for ad- 
venture will be sure to get it. It is bound to have an army of readers 
that few authors can expect. — Philadelphia Press. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, N. Y. 

nr Either of the above works will be sent br/ mail, ‘postage prepaid, to any part of the 
United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 


BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST 


By Lew Wallace. New Edition, pp. 552. 16rno, 
Cloth, $1 50. • 

Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature 
of this romance does not often appear in works of fiction. . . . Some 
of Mr. Wallace’s writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. 
The scenes described in the New Testament are rewritten with the 
power and skill of an accomplished master of style. — W. Y. Times. 

Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans 
at the beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and 
brilliant. . . . We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes; 
we witness a sea-fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Ro- 
man galley, domestic interiors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among 
the tribes of the desert ; palaces, prisons, the haunts of dissipated 
Roman youth, the houses of pious families of Israel. There is plenty 
of exciting incident; everything is animated, vivid, and glowing. — 
iV. Y. Tribune. 

From the opening of the volume to the very close the reader’s 
interest will be kept at the highest pitch, and the novel will be pro- 
nounced by all one of the greatest novels of the day. — Boston Post. 

It is full of poetic beauty, as though born of an Eastern sage, and 
there is sufficient of Oriental customs, geography, nomenclature, etc., 
to greatly strengthen the semblance. — Boston Commonwealth. 

“Ben-Hur” is interesting, and its characterization is fine and 
strong. Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which 
the scene is laid, and will help those who read it with reasonable 
attention to realize the nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jeru- 
salem and Roman life at Antioch at the time of our Saviour’s ad- 
vent. — Examiner^ N. Y. 

It is really Scripture history of Christ’s time clothed gracefully 
and delicately in the flowing and loose drapery of modern fiction. . . . 
Few late works of fiction excel it in genuine ability and interest. — 
N. Y. Graphic. 

One of the most remarkable and delightful books. It is as real 
and warm as life itself, and as attractive as the grandest and most 
heroic chapters of history. — Indianapolis Journal. 

The book is one of unquestionable power, and will be read with 
unwonted interest by many readers who are weary of the conven- 
tional novel and romance. — Boston Journal. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New Y^ork. 

J®* The above work sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United 
States or Canada, on receipt of the price. 


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(jeila 


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